Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China 9780754656487, 2006045851, 9781315244648


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Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Theory: The Publicness of Religion, and Religion in Public Political Culture
1 The Publicness of Religion
2 Liberal Restraint on Religion in Public Political Culture
3 Criticisms of Liberal Restraint
4 Religion in Modern Democratic Pluralistic Society
Part II: Religion and Its Political Context in China
5 Religion in China
6 The Political Context of Religion in China
Part III: The Appropriate Role of Religion in Public Political Culture in a Democratic China: A Proposal
7 Religious Liberty and the Public Role of Religion
8 Religious Diversity and Chinese Political Culture
Conclusion
References
Index
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RELIGIOUS DIVErSITY ANd PUBLIC RELIGION IN CHINA This book addresses the issue of public religion and its implications in Chinese society. Zhibin Xie explores various normative considerations concerning the appropriate role of religion in public political life in a democratic culture. Besides drawing on the theoretical discourse on religion in the public sphere from Western academics, it holds that the issue of religion in Chinese politics should be addressed by paying attention to characteristics of religious diversity and its political context in China. This leads to a position of liberal “constrained public religion” in China, which encourages religious contribution to the public sphere as a substantial component of religious liberty in China on the one hand and proposes some constraints both upon government and religions for regulating religious political discourse on the other.

This book is dedicated to my mother, Caifeng Huang, and in memory of my father, Zhangting Xie (1933–1971)

Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China

ZHIBIN XIE Institute of Sino-Christian Studies, Hong Kong

ROUTLEDGE

Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2006 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Zhibin Xie, 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Zhibin Xie has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Xie, Zhibin Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China 1. Religion and politics – China 2. Freedom of religion – China 3. China – Politics and government – 2002- 4. China – Religion I.Title 322.1’0951 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Xie, Zhibin, 1970– Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China / Zhibin Xie. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-5648-7 (alk. paper) 1. China – Religion. 2. Religion and public life – China. I. Title. BL1802.X54 2006 322'.10951–dc22 2006045851

ISBN 13: 9780754656487 (hbk)

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction

vii 1

PART I: THEORY: THE PUBLICNESS OF RELIGION, AND RELIGION IN PUBLIC POLITICAL CULTURE 1

The Publicness of Religion

9

2

Liberal Restraint on Religion in Public Political Culture

19

3

Criticisms of Liberal Restraint

39

4

Religion in Modern Democratic Pluralistic Society

57

PART II: RELIGION AND ITS POLITICAL CONTEXT IN CHINA 5

Religion in China

71

6

The Political Context of Religion in China

79

PART III: THE APPROPRIATE ROLE OF RELIGION IN PUBLIC POLITICAL CULTURE IN A DEMOCRATIC CHINA: A PROPOSAL 7

Religious Liberty and the Public Role of Religion

93

8

Religious Diversity and Chinese Political Culture

105

Conclusion

143

References

147

Index

159

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Acknowledgments This book is a revised version of my dissertation submitted to the University of Hong Kong for the degree of doctor of philosophy. I wish to express my profound gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Jiwei Ci, for his help with my doctoral studies and dissertation writing at HKU. His insights, patience, and encouragement have not only guided me through my years of study, but also illuminate the path of my academic career ahead. In revising the text for publication, I am thankful to the reviewer’s comments as well as those of my dissertation examiners, including Dr Yong Huang and Dr Zhihua Yao. Some ideas in Chapters 7 and 8 originally appeared in my paper “Religious Diversity and the Public Roles of Religion in Chinese Society”, published in Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 13/2 (2003): 133–46. Thanks to the journal for its permission to reprint here. Four institutions should also be mentioned. The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty at Grand Rapids, Michigan, awarded me a Calihan Research Fellowship in the summer of 2001, and while there I had access to many academic resources and much scholarly help regarding my research. This opportunity also improved my understanding of the role religion can play in cultivating a free and virtuous society. The Institute of Sino-Christian Studies (Hong Kong) offered me a research associateship in 2003–2004, where I conducted an evaluation of the empirical study of Christianity in China that was relevant to my research in general. This project deepened my understanding of the current situation of religion (and of Christianity in particular) in China. St John’s College at the University of Hong Kong gave me kind support for my residence there in 2003–2004, which enabled me to complete my studies at the university. And thanks are also due to the department of philosophy at the University of Hong Kong, and in particular to Vivian Chu and Loletta Li, for their help during my studies there. I am grateful to all these institutions for their support. In addition, my work has benefited from communication with many individual scholars. I am much indebted to all for their kind suggestions and comments, which inspired and facilitated my study in various ways. These scholars include Max L. Stackhouse, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Robert Audi, Michael Perry (who generously sent me some relevant materials), Richard John Neuhaus, Herman De Dijn, Hendrik Vroom, Eric Chong, Chan Shun Hing, Kwan Kai Man, Carver Yu, Jason Hing Kau Yeung, Kung Lap-Yan, Thomas Leung, Anthony Lam, Pisheng Kang, Qi Duan, Zhe Jin, and Peng Liu. I also conducted interviews with the leaders of religious associations in Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Guangzhou. They provided much useful information about religion in present-day China, and I thank them for their cooperation and courage.

viii

Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China

Finally, during my studies and work over the years, my family has given me continuous support and understanding, which has strengthened me to face the challenges of my work. They deserve my deep gratitude, now and in my academic career ahead. Thanks also to Sarah Lloyd of Ashgate for her support, from my initial contact through to publication.

Introduction In modern pluralist societies, the public sphere has been secularized and religion is relegated to private life. On the one hand, there is a differentiation of private and public spheres as well as the marginalization of religion, and on the other hand, the religious side shows an unwillingness to be treated as a merely private matter, and there is an increasing demand from religious believers for public influence and for recognition of the public significance of religious values. This calls for a reconsideration of the question of what role religion should play in the public sphere in modern pluralist democracies. By “public sphere” I mean civil society and the domain of politics. If we put this issue of religion in the public sphere into the framework of a religion�������������������������������������������������������������������������� –state relationship, we will see that the understanding of religion������� ��������������� –state separation in a liberal democracy is also controversial regarding the role of religion in politics. There are different attitudes toward the separation, and the resulting preclusion of ������������������������������������������������������������ religion ��������������������������������������������������� from politics. This tells us that ����������������� the ������������� relationship between ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� religion and politics, including ������������������������������������������������������ aspect of religion’s ���������������������������������� influence on political life, need������������� s������������ more study. Moreover, the issue of religion in politics is relevant to the meaning of religious freedom in modern democratic societies, especially religious expression and participation in public life. These factors have raised the question of how to define and relocate the role of religion in public life, especially its legitimate role in public political culture in modern pluralistic societies. In the Western academic context, the issues of religion’s public dimension and the role of religion in public life (especially in politics) have recently received attention and debate, not only in philosophical and religious areas but also among sociological, legal and political scholars. The debate is conducted between political liberals on the one hand, who advocate liberal restraint, and communitarian and religious scholars on the other, who criticize this position. The liberals question whether religion, or the religious, should have any part in public political culture in pluralistic democracy and ask for restraint on religious political discourse. Their critics insist on the significance of religious values in public political debate and religion’s contribution to democratic politics. The recent advocacy of “public religion,” namely, the assumption of religion’s public character and role in Western societies, may demonstrate its universal significance, since no modern society with religious traditions can avoid this issue. Yet different societies, due to their specific religious and political contexts, may encounter different problems in one way or another. Therefore, theoretical approaches developed by Western academics will need further discussion if they are to be applied to very different societies.



Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China

The issue of public religion is also an unavoidable one in Chinese society. This is so in three senses: first, the religious character of Chinese society in terms of its rich religious tradition and practice, as well as a certain religious revival in the last decades; second, the increasing demand for social and political concern and participation from religious believers, including their dissent on public issues; third, along with the gradual construction of democratic institutions, and increasing freedom granted to religious practice in China, the possibility of a stronger voice in public life from various groups, including religious ones. To explore the public roles of religion in the framework of religious liberty in a democratic China, I will borrow David Hollenbach’s understanding of religious freedom and argue that the achievement of religious liberty in China will entail “negative immunity,” a concept meaning that the state should grant individuals and groups more freedom to exercise religious belief, practice worship, and engage in religious rituals. I also believe that this achievement of religious liberty depends upon the idea of “positive empowerment,” an idea implying the presence and involvement of religious individuals in the public and political realm. In China, the political reforms moving towards democratization, and religious believers’ calls for more freedom of religious exercise, will promote the diversity of religious faith and religious communities. This diverse religious life has always been an integral part of Chinese society. In general, newly formed democratic societies encounter the problem of religious engagement in public life. It will also become necessary for China to redefine its political attitude towards religious practice. Greater religious liberty in a democratic China will create more room for religious expression in the public domain, especially in public political discourse. I will mainly consider problems within religious diversity that are endemic to the Chinese public arena. My study will first introduce and analyze theoretical approaches developed by Western academics concerning religion in the public and political arena. I will then place this issue in the Chinese context and deal with the problems arising from this context, with particular attention to the implications and developments of the theory of public religion in a specific society. The book������������������������������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������ consist����������������������������������������������������������� s���������������������������������������������������������� of three ������������������������������������������������������ parts. The theoretical chapters (1–4) in Part I discuss the publicness of religion, and religion in public political culture. In this part, even though I bear in mind the issues and ideas that might be relevant to the Chinese context, I try to display a certain wholeness of the theory, namely, the role of religion in the public sphere of modern democratic societies. When

 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� See David Hollenbach, “Freedom and Truth: Religious Liberty as Immunity and Empowerment,” in J. Leon Hopper and Todd David Whitmore, eds, American Public Ethics in the Tradition of John Courtney Murray (Kansas City���������������������� , MO:����������������� Sheed and Ward, 1991), 129–48.



Introduction



I talk about religion in public life, religion itself specifies a system of religious doctrines, religious believers, and religious organizations. Chapter 1 is concerned with the publicness of religion in general. After studying the place of religion in modern secular societies, I maintain the public dimension and the public roles of religion both in the public moral and communal life of civil society, and in political life. The coexistence of arguments for privatization and for deprivatization of religion demonstrates the need to take the issue of religion in the public sphere seriously rather than to remove it from public life totally. The real question is what is the appropriate mode for religion to participate in public life, especially in the forum of politics. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the controversial issue of religion in public political discourse. Chapter 2 shows liberal positions on religion in public political culture. It starts from the affirmation of religious and moral pluralism in modern democratic societies, which seeks shared political principles and an attitude of public reasonableness and respect for fellow citizens as free and equal actors in the public political space. Then I will concentrate on John Rawls and Robert Audi’s discussions of restraints on the place of religion in political life. I present Rawls’s position on religious doctrine in liberal politics in terms of three principles, namely, the principle of rights, the principle of independence, and the principle of introduction, where I am mostly concerned with his most recent “wide view of public reason.” This view requires that the principles and policies advocated by religious or nonreligious doctrines should be sufficiently supported by public reasons. On the other hand, Audi makes appeal to the idea of adequate secular reason in law and public policy advocacy. Chapter 3 studies the criticisms of liberal restraint on religion in public political culture from secular and religious perspectives presented by Michael Sandel, Michael Perry, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and others. These scholars seek to establish the limitations and inadequacy of liberal reliance on public reasons or freestanding conceptions without the engagement of moral and religious argument in debating political issues. Instead, religious moral involvement in politics is in their view indispensable and can help the solution of controversial  ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� It will be noted that my study of religion in public life, and especially in political debate in the West, is drawn mostly from the academic resources developed by scholars in the United States. These are, therefore, perspectives in which a high level of religiosity in the social background is taken for granted, which is not the case to the same degree in any other Western society (American scholars have traditionally attributed their country’s high religiosity to the constitutional separation of church and state, though this is unlikely to be the whole answer). Perhaps for this very reason, however, American scholars have been at the forefront in studying this issue seriously; together with the fact that scholars from a variety of disciplines have also been involved, this means that many resources have emerged in this field in the United States. Even though the range of reference of these scholars is sometimes limited to the American context, the theoretical application of their ideas is certainly not confined to the United States.



Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China

political issues in many cases. These scholars are also concerned with the ethic of religious citizens in political life. In Chapter 4, I give an account of religion in modern democratic pluralistic society from the above debate. I present two aspects of the debate. The first is the relationship between religious freedom and religious expression in public life. The liberal position is that in order to guarantee religious freedom it is necessary to place constraints on religion’s political actions and on the use of religious reasons in public political fora. Their critics, on the other hand, maintain that the public dimension of religion, and political actions deriving from religious convictions, should be included in respect of religious freedom. The second aspect concerns how and to what degree religious pluralism affects religious argument in public political discourse. The liberal respect for religious pluralism in order to neutralize it for political purposes is criticized by communitarian and religious scholars. For these scholars, it is not adequate simply to tolerate and respect people’s various moral and religious views; rather, religious and moral pluralism should be reflected in public political culture, in deliberating on controversial political issues. We will see that the criticisms do not disregard fundamental liberal principles when they encourage religious engagement in democratic politics. This leads to two alternatives to political liberalism, namely, communal liberalism and religious liberalism. With respect to fundamental liberal values such as value-pluralism and the absence of religious dominance in politics, these two liberalisms stress religion’s contribution to the public life of modern pluralistic societies and thus the mutual need between religion and liberalism. In the last section of Chapter 4, I point out the significance of public religion in a global context, including its potential problems in the Chinese context, problems which need input from the debate among Western scholars. These problems include the relationship between the affirmation of religion’s moral role and its political role, religious diversity (among various religions more than within a particular religion), and religious participation in politics, and the differences between religious doctrines and religious organizations in terms of their involvement in politics. To discuss the problems of public religion in the Chinese context, a starting point will be to look at the unique picture of religion in Chinese society, and my purpose will be to clarify what religious freedom should mean in China as part of a broader framework of public religion. Therefore, in the subsequent parts of� this book���������������������������������������������������������������������� , my argument��������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������� will focus on the problem of religious liberty in China within the context of religious diversity in Chinese society. The aim of this study is to explore various normative considerations concerning the appropriate role of religion in public political culture in a democratic China. My research question may be stated as the following: in a democratic China, where the full rights to religious practice are protected and religious diversity is widened and respected, how does religion, in all its diversity, engage public political culture?



Introduction



While drawing on the theoretical resources of Western academics, I hold that the issue of religion in Chinese politics cannot be separated from the special characteristics of religion in China, and its political context. The first task is to provide a descriptive analysis of these aspects, which is given in Part II. Chapter 5 gives a brief picture of religion in China in terms of its diverse character and the doctrinal and organizational differences among religions. The religiosity, rich and diverse religious traditions, and the syncretic nature of religious beliefs in Chinese society present difficult problems for religious involvement in political issues. In terms of doctrinal and organizational differences, I divide religions in China into three groups: Buddhism and Taoism, popular religion, and Christianity and Islam. Chapter 6 treats the political context of religion in China, especially in its communist period. It looks at the state-management����������������������������� system of ��������������������� religion, and the state’s varying attitudes toward religious beliefs and religious organizations. These attitudes extend to the government’s strict supervision of religious organizations in order to prevent it gaining public influence. I point out that in contemporary China, religion is strictly constrained and even precluded from the public sphere, which should be distinguished from the liberal restraint studied in Part I. I also pay attention to the fact of the emerging religious communities������������� outside the mainstream official management������������������������������ ���������������������������������������� system of religious affairs. I will take these aspects into account when I make normative considerations on the issue of religious involvement in Chinese democratic politics. My proposals on this issue form Part III of the book. In Chapter 7, I clarify the meaning of religious liberty in the Chinese context. As mentioned above, this encompasses not ������������������������������������������ only���������������������������������� individual and communal exercise of religious worship without state coercion and interference, �������������������� but also ����������� the aspect of religious empowerment in the public sphere. This chapter will concentrate on the former as an essential condition of the latter. Some relevant factors include: religious resources (doctrines, organizations and so on), religious arguments about public issues, the affirmation of the moral role of religion and the promotion of religious rights, the participation of religion in public life, and the independence of religion as autonomous force. In the Chinese context, it is also important to make a distinction between religion’s contribution to public political culture and religiously inspired political rebellion. The realization of full religious liberty in China, including the affirmation of religious involvement in public life, is a theoretical starting point from which in Chapter 8 I discuss the details of the role of religion in public life: the constraints upon religion itself and the government as the diverse religious groups and doctrines become involved in Chinese public political culture, and the principles to regulate religious political discourse. In the Chinese context, I will focus on the issue of avoiding political dominance either by religion in general or by any particular religion, to be achieved by such strategies as: the “equalitarian” principle among religions, the “neutrality” principle between the religious and the non-religious, the independent engagement



Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China

of religious doctrines in Chinese political life, and the translation of religious ideas into publicly accessible reasons in making and justifying political decisions. Bearing in mind the characteristics of religious organizations in China, I will also discuss the distinctive relation between religion and politics in terms of religious doctrines and religious organizations. With reference to the relationship of Christian organizations with politics in modern and contemporary China, I will employ Christianity as an example to study the issue of religious organization in Chinese political culture. I mainly discuss the independence of religious organizations not only from state interference but also from any political aims and direct exercise of political power, while I advocate its taking moral positions publicly so as to enrich political life. I am also concerned with the need to respect other groups (religious or otherwise) when religious organizations engage in public political debate. In the final section of Chapter 8, a case study of public political debate on abortion will demonstrate these principles and constraints concerning religion in public political discourse in China. Through these discussions, in ��������������������������������������������������� this book I give ������������������������������������ a tentative proposal regarding the appropriate role of religion in public political culture, in an attempt to articulate a position that both satisfies the fundamental principles of a democratic society and shows respect for ���������������������������������������������������������� the special characteristics of religion and its political setting in the Chinese context.

PArT I Theory: The Publicness of Religion, and Religion in Public Political Culture

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Chapter 1

The Publicness of Religion In this chapter, I will discuss the publicness of religion. When I speak of the “public” aspect of religion, in contrast to the inner spiritual life of religious believers, I mean religion’s influence and participation in cultural systems and public life, including political issues, beyond the level of private life. Although there may be other forms of public life, when I discuss the public dimension of religion here, I mainly refer to two arenas of civil society and public political culture. The issue of religion in public life, and of its innately private and public qualities, is originally raised by religion itself. Clark Cochran introduces the paradox of public and private life in the sphere of religion: “Religion is a constant reminder of the unity of public and private life, but also of the boundary between them.” For instance, prayer and conversion, two essential phenomena of monotheistic religions, are both private and public, but they “reveal a tension between public and private life.” He explains further that, as the core of religious life, faith “possess������������������������������������������������������������� es����������������������������������������������������������� many attributes of privacy and demands a large measure of freedom from public interference … faith manifests both public dimensions of worship, creed, and ethical directive.” Many religious convictions, religious organizations and religious activities go beyond the private realm of religious believers, entering the public realm. The unity and tension of public and private life in religion demonstrate its characteristics, on the one hand, and determines its inevitable influence on public life and political issues, on the other. “Religion neither can nor should remain within the confines of private life, abandoning public business.” Cochran claims that this feature of religion at the “crossroads of public and private’ brings “a dynamism to both private and public life” and a deep involvement in “the policy questions” with “political effect.” The������������������������������������������������������������������������������ ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� inseparability��������������������������������������������������������������� of ����������������������������������������������������������� the public������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������� and �������������������������������������������� private ������������������������������������ aspects of�������������������������� religion creates a space for discussing the������������������������������������������������������������������� public������������������������������������������������������������ ����������������������������������������������������������� side of religion.������������������������������������������ ����������������������������������������� Should we relegate ���������������������� religion to����������� a��������� private realm or ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� pursue������������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������������� its public role��������������������������������������������������� , especially in modern secularized and pluralistic



Clarke E. Cochran, Religion in Public and Private Life (New York: Routledge, 1990), x.  Ibid.���� ,��� 1. ��  Ibid., 16. ���  Ibid., 168.  Ibid., 77, 16.

10

Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China

societies? José Casanova’s Public Religions in the Modern World offers a striking analysis of the public role of religion against the background of secularization. Casanova also describes the private and public dimensions of individual religiosity, but he makes a distinction of private and public religions from the perspective of religious differentiation. In modern differentiated societies, the private–public distinction is crucial to the social order, and “religion itself is intrinsically connected with modern historical differentiation of private and public spheres.” This differentiation demands that religion withdraw from the secular sphere and remain in the private sphere. This marginalization of religion to a private sphere is regarded as one aspect of the modern tendency to secularization. A crucial point in Casanova is a paradox between the privatization and “disprivatization” of religion in modern differentiated societies. In the modern world, the quest for personal meaning and salvation is limited to the private sphere strictly. This is due to internal factors within religion itself—such as general pietistic trends, religious individuation and the reflexive nature of modern religion—as well as to external factors—such as structural trends of differentiation—under modern liberal condition of a diverse range of conceptions of the public good. Thus public institutions now stand far away from the religious, and religion is relegated into “a circumscribed and differentiated religious sphere.” Some contemporary liberal philosophers also argue for the privatization of religion in a liberal democracy. Among them Richard Rorty is an important figure. He agrees with “privatizing religion—keeping out of … the ‘public square’, making it seem bad taste to bring religion into discussions of public policy.” For him, to privatize religion is to protect religious liberty and to preserve a democratic political community, because “in political discussion with those outside the relevant religious community, it is a conversation-stopper.”10 In a more recent article he stresses this position again: “The only role for religious belief will be to help individuals find meaning in their lives, and to serve as a help to individuals in their times of trouble. Religion will, in this secularist utopia, be pruned back to the  José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 40.  Casanova divides the theory of secularization into three theses: differentiation thesis, decline-of-religion thesis, and the privatization thesis. See Casanova, 19–20. See more analysis about the modern processes of secularization and the situation of religion, in David Martin, The Religious and the Secular: Studies in Secularization (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969); David Martin, A General Theory of Secularization (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978); Olivier Tschnnen, “The Secularization Paradigm: A Systematization,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 30/4 (1991), 395–416; Roy Wallis and Steve Bruce, “Secularization: The Orthodox Model,” in Steve Bruce ������� (������ ed.��� )��, Religion and Modernization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 8–30.  See Casanova’s analysis of the privatization-of-religion thesis, at Casanova, 35–9.  Richard Rorty, “Religion as Conversation-Stopper,” Common Knowledge 3/1 (1994), 1��� –�� 6�. 10 Ibid.���� , 3.



The Publicness of Religion

11

parish level.”11 He suggests further that to keep the conversation going requires us not to quote “unarguable first principles,” philosophical or religious.12 Even though the privatization of religion is widely maintained in the modern secular world, Casanova argues for a process of “deprivatization” of religion to resist the marginalization and privatization of religion suggested by the theory of secularization: What I call the “deprivatization” of modern religion is the process whereby religion abandons its assigned place in the private sphere and enters the undifferentiated public sphere of civil society to take part in the ongoing process of contestation, discursive legitimation, and redrawing the boundaries.13

However, to affirm the public roles of religion is conditional. According to Casanova, there should be three conditions for religious intervention in the public sphere: it should be undertaken by religions with a public, communal identity either by doctrine or by cultural traditions; it should be capable of maintaining a dynamic and vital profile as a private religion of salvation; and the contemporary global context of action should promote this intervention.14 Under these circumstances, Casanova suggests a typology of public religion that defines religion’s public role at three levels of public space: state, political society, and civil society.15 In the public sphere, religion will either serve in the constitution of a liberal political and social order or contest the “limits” of the order.It will take three main forms: to defend the traditional life of its adherents against various forms of state or market penetration; to question the claims of states and markets in case of their disregard of extrinsic traditional moral norms; and to maintain the very principle of a “common good” against individualist liberal theories of modern political philosophy that might tend to undermine this principle.16 11

Richard Rorty, “Religion in the Public Square: A Reconsideration,” Journal of Religious Ethics 31����������������� /���������������� 1 (2003), 141–9. 12 Ibid.,������� 148��� –�� 9. 13 Casanova, 65–6. ���������������������������������������������������������������� See also Peter Berger������������������������������������������� ’������������������������������������������ s “��������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������� desecularization����������������������� ’���������������������� thesis, which claims that secularization “���������������������������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������������������� has also provoked ������������������������������������������������������� powerful movements of counter-secularization. Also, secularization on the societal level is not necessarily linked to secularization on the level of individual consciousness.” ������������������������������������������������������� Peter L. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global Overview,” in Peter L. Berger (ed.), The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 1–18. 14 Casanova, 224–5. 15 The three levels of public space are proposed by Seyla Benhabib, and Casanova employs it in his idea of “public religion.” See Seyla Benhabib, “Models of Public Space,” in Craig Calhoun�������� (������ ed.��� )��, Habermas and the Public Sphere (�������������������������� Cambridge, MA: ����������� MIT Press, 1993), 73–98. In my studies in the public dimensions of religion, I concentrate on religion at the levels of civil society and political life. 16 Casanova, 228–9. He also expresses a similar idea in justification of the deprivatization of religion (57–8).

12

Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China

Through questioning or protecting the political and social order, public religion may acquire its legitimate forms, in which religion may play a political role. This will allow for private religious life as well as the diversity of religions, but will not endanger either modern individual freedoms or modern differentiated structures.17 Therefore, the private–public differentiation in religion is not absolute. One may witness a process of deprivatization of religion at the same time as religion is being forced into the private sphere in the modern world.18 In modern societies, even secular ones, the place of religion is like a double-edged sword: the tendency to privatize religion, on the one hand, and the attempt to maintain the public side of religion, on the other. As James Wood points out: “Public religion has, in fact, been more characteristic of the phenomenon of religion than private religion.”19 Within this context of affirming the public dimension and public roles of religion, I will first consider the issue of religion and morality to demonstrate that religion might be relevant to moral questions in public life. The traditional studies of the relation of religion to morality concern the dependence of morality on religion or the conflict between them, and there have been many debates on these issues.20 Suppose that we recognize modern democratic societies as being characterized by the diversity of conceptions of the good life. As Charles Larmore points out, “a characteristic theme of modern thought is that rational agreement about the nature of the good life is improbable.”21 In particular,the different, sometimes conflicting, moral principles thrown up by religious pluralism become more and more evident in modern societies. Nevertheless, moral disagreement or moral pluralism shows not only that moral views are not simply based on any particular religious conviction (so-called “moral autonomy”22) but also that both religious and secular moral positions should play an appropriate role in society. Citizens hold various moral views 17

Ibid., 39, 215. Ibid.,���� 41. ��� 19 James E. Wood, Jr, “Public Religion Vis-à-vis the Prophetic Role of Religion,” in William H. Swatos, Jr and James K. Wellman, Jr�������� (������ eds��� )��, The Power of Religious Publics (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), 33–��� 51�. 20 See a comprehensive study on the relationship between religion and morality, in Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman, Religion and Morality, trans. from the Hebrew by Batya Stein (Amsterdam: Rodopi��������� ,�������� 1995). 21 Charles Larmore, The Morals of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 51. 22 Larmore says that “we no longer need God to explain the world and to ground the rules of our common life” (ibid���������������������������������������������������� .��������������������������������������������������� , 44). Robert Audi also claims the independence of morality and religion, saying “a person can be moral without being religious and there could be moral truths even if there should be no religious truths that support them,” and “moral truths need not derive from religious ones.” Robert Audi, “The Separation of Church and State and the Obligations of Citizenship,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 18��� /�� 3 (1989), 259–96. 18



The Publicness of Religion

13

derived either from religious or nonreligious principles, both of which may have an impact on citizens’ moral attitudes and behaviors; we should treat them equally. From this point of view, when we consider the religion–morality relationship in modern religiously and morally pluralistic societies, it seems more pressing for us to ask how religion can contribute to the moral life of civil society—and to debates on some controversial political issues (as a kind of moral resource)— than whether it determines or contradicts morality.23 So despite disagreements regarding the religion–morality relationship in general, we may focus on the issue of the contribution of religious resources to the public sphere, especially religious views of the human good in public life.24 In other words, the traditional problem of the religion–morality relationship may be transformed into religious involvement in public life, especially as a kind of moral resource, if we put the issue in the public arena in modern democratic pluralistic societies. To be sure, to affirm the public roles of religion is not to seek or claim common agreement on any particular conception of the good grounded on religious doctrines in the public sphere of modern societies marked by moral and religious pluralism. Rather, this affirmation refers to religion as a source of ethical values, and thus to its possible contribution to communal moral life as well as to political debates on controversial issues with a moral dimension. Therefore, to discuss religion’s public role presupposes two things: neither to base morality on religious convictions nor, equally, to exclude religious resources from the moral realm of public life. In asserting the public dimension of religion or its public roles, I will examine how religion contributes to the public moral and communal life of civil society in terms of the religious understanding of the human good. This source derives from religious doctrines and religious communities as well, since the believers in religious communities may form their common understanding of the good based on religious convictions. David Hollenbach asserts that this religious understanding might become not only “private self-understanding” but also a “public vision” of the good. In this sense, “religion should be represented in the discourse about the

23 This dimension is in accord with Sagi and Statman’s conclusion that “morality neither depends on, nor conflicts with religion” (Sagi and Statman,������������������������ ����������������������� 159). This approach is more theoretical, while my understanding here is from the practical questions concerning religion in public life. I am also inclined to think that this view can help to defuse the long debate on the religion–morality relationship. 24 According to Sagi and Statman’s discussion, one kind of dependence of morality on religion (“weak dependence”) states that human beings are mediated or motivated by religion to act morally. In its moderate versions, “religion improves the chances of individuals and of societies to behave morally, because it fosters and enhances moral activity” (Sagi and Statman, 6, 97.) If we connect the issue of the religion–morality relationship to religion’s public role, this point would appear to be relevant.

14

Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China

good of public life.”25 Although religious doctrines are usually said to be accepted and recognized by personal experience, many moral doctrines may also be held in common by nonreligious people and accepted in other communities so that they have public significance without being limited to religious groups. The moral instructions of religion not only shape character and moral virtue of religious believers, in Cochran’s description, by supplying “a positive notion of duty and goodness” and inculcating “habits of stability, moral decency, domestic tranquillity, and public good,”26 but also advance a community spirit through making certain religious virtues publicly recognizable through the active social involvement of religious communities. Cochran says, “Because it influences moral virtue and individual well-being, religion can powerfully assist the state by inculcating and nourishing a moral foundation for culture.”27 This leads to another point about the influence of religious communities in civil society. It can be argued that churches help strengthen solidarity and social harmony in civil society. Some religious values, such as love and commitment, will also—as the spirit of religious communities which are a constituent part of civil society— play an important role in shaping the culture of civil society.28 In Hollenbach’s words, “religious communities make perhaps their most important contribution to public life through this contribution to the formation of culture.”29 Religious contribution to the moral life of civil society in terms of character and virtue inculcation as well as community spirit bears some relation to Harry M. Clor’s understanding of public morality in the sense of an ethic of decency30 or civility. He regards public morality as a communal morality or ethic of restraint to serve two social interests: community and character—that is, to support the traditions that are essential bonds of community, on the one hand, and to endorse and promote certain qualities of human character—“habits of restraint”—on the other.31 25

David Hollenbach, “Contexts of the Political Role of Religion: Civil Society and Culture,” San Diego Law Review 30 (1993), 877–901. 26 Cochran, 57. 27 Ibid, x. 28 See Hollenbach, “Contexts of the Political Role of Religion: Civil Society and Culture,” ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 885�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� –������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 6.����������������������������������������������������������������������������� About the religious contribution to the culture, Rhys H. Williams explains, “Religion is a useful resource for social movements because it is a great source of what I have called both ‘culture’ and ‘ideology.’ Religion shapes the identity, the sense of solidarity, and the moral outrage that are integral to social movement cultures.” Rhys H. Williams, “Religion as Political Resource: Culture or Ideology?,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 35������������������� /������������������ 4 (1996), 368–78. 29 Hollenbach, “Contexts of the Political Role of Religion������� ,������ ” ���� 896. 30 For Clor, an ethic of decency “reflects notions of what is humanly respectable (or degrading) conduct and what is a civilized mode of life.” Harry M. Clor, Public Morality and Liberal Society: Essays on Decency, Law, and Pornography (Notre Dame����������������� , IN������������� : University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), 14. 31 Ibid.,������� 33–4. ������



The Publicness of Religion

15

For Clor, the reasons to advance public morality include the need for moral or communal guidance in civil society.32 Robert Booth Fowler asserts that “modern liberalism cannot and does not provide meaning or a shared morality” and lacks the sense of community.33 By contrast with what Fowler characterizes as the liberal neutrality regarding conceptions of the human good, communitarian thinkers maintain the need for civic identity or public-spiritedness in society. At this point, Clor thinks that public morality is a communitarian policy and it can benefit “the maintenance of certain common bonds and standards of value for the checking and balancing of our libertarian inclinations.”34 Here I want to borrow the idea of public morality in this strict sense: communal life and human character. I agree that religion may make its contribution to public morality, both to community and to human character. Fowler also insists on liberalism’s need for religion since religion offers the meaning and the sense of community in spirituality, both in its inclusiveness and its friendliness.35 As Clor suggests, a “public-spirited or communalistic religiousness” can support public morality. He says: “Beliefs and customs arising out of biblical and other spiritual traditions have helped to promote our ‘habits of restraint’.”36 Even though Hollenbach, Clor, Cochran and Flower affirm the public moral role of religion in different ways, it appears that they stand on the same side regarding the contribution of religion to the moral culture of civil society. In short, in the first instance, the public role of religion is to form and sustain the culture of civil society through the contribution of religious understanding of the human good to human character and community.37 32

Ibid., 35. Robert Booth Fowler, “Religion and Liberal Culture: Unconventional Partnership or Unhealthy Co-Dependency,” in Luis E. Lugo�������� (������ ed.��� )��, Religion, Public Life, and the American Polity (Knoxville��������������������������������������������������� , TN����������������������������������������������� : University of Tennessee Press, 1994),�������� 201–21. ������� 34 Clor, 37. 35 He writes: “Religion plays a role as one significant port of welcome for people in search of community that liberalism and liberal culture know too little about’ (Fowler, “Religion and Liberal Culture,”��������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������� 204). He also says: “Investment in religion for meaning and community is less act of rejection than a journey to fulfill what liberalism does not provide” (ibid., 205). 36 Clor, 35, 37. Robert George also recognizes the role of religious communities in upholding public morality: “The primary role is played by families, religious communities, organizations … and other institutions that, by working closely with individuals, inculcate an understanding of morality and promote virtue.” Robert P. George, “The Concept of Public Morality,” American Journal of Jurisprudence, 45 (2000), 17–31. 37 In my overall studies here, I use the term of “civil society” based on the understanding of “intermediate associations which are neither the state nor the (extended) family” in the sense of the non-private but also non-political sphere of society. See Iain McLean (������ ������� ed.��� )��, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (Oxford University Press, 2003. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Princeton Theological Seminary Library. 31 July 2006 http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t86.e203). 33

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Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China

Take an example. Historically, public moral life in the United States, it can be argued, has been supported or encouraged by religion. This view is held by the French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville, who travelled through the United States in 1831–1832. He said: “There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.”38 He affirms the ������������������������������������������������������������������������ important role that religion play����������������������������������� ed��������������������������������� in American society and��������� , in his view,�������������������������������� in preserving American freedom. Particularly, he points out that Christian morality is common to all sects (which was more or less true of non-native American citizens in the 1830s) and hence influences the manners of the American. He argues that a ��������������������������������������������������������������������� flourishing religion������������������������������������������������� helps fashion the morals of a society, provides the secure principles of our public life and supplies ���������������������������������� the moral foundation for ���� liberty and equality. “����������������������������������������������������������� It directs the manners of the community, and by regulating domestic life, it regulates the state.�”39 With hindsight, the influence that religion may have had on nineteenth century American morals seems more complex and sometimes contradictory than de Tocqueville’s formulations allow, since the society he observed carried out the almost complete dispossession of indigenous peoples within its borders (in defiance of its own treaties) and tolerated slavery for a generation after it had been abolished in the British empire—situations that would have involved very real personal moral decisions by millions of Americans on a daily basis. Even though de Tocqueville’s descriptions might be less applicable today, the basic point about religious influence on public and communal morality in the United States can still to some extent be argued today. Yet another aspect of religion in public life is religion’s impact on political life. As Cochran reminds us: “Politics is one form of public life; there are others of equal significance.”40 In public life, politics is a distinctive and vital form, but the public sphere is broader than politics alone. In terms of this understanding, Cochran specifies two levels of religion in the public sphere: the contribution of religion to individuals and culture, which is beyond politics, on the one hand, and the legitimate political dimension of religion, on the other.41 Therefore, when we consider the issue of religion in the public realm, we should treat religion in the non-political public life42 and in politics separately, although there might be interactions between them. 38

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953),

303.

39

Ibid., 304. Cochran, 43. 41 The first level refers to religion’s public role in shaping character and virtue, which has been mentioned in my earlier discussion, while the second is connected with religion’s participatory side in religious community as well as political community. He also proposes a tensional model between religion and politics: “Religion needs the influence of politics, and politics needs the challenge of religious belief ” (Cochran, x–xi, 188, quotation at 168). 42 Here it may mainly refer to the moral life of civil society. 40



The Publicness of Religion

17

While affirming the public side of religion, Cochran mentions two dangers that might present themselves to “public religion:” its passion and its universal claims, which may result in religious domination of public life and the combination of religion with political ideology.43 The dangers remind us of the limitation of religion’s public role in the modern secular world. However, this does not imply that we should no longer talk about the public side of religion. The likely dangers of public religion and the privatization of religion do challenge the legitimacy of the public role of religion, but do not necessarily demand its complete withdrawal from the public sphere. Casanova, for example, argues for the deprivatization of religion—that is, that there should be some forms of public religion. Cochran points out the dangers both of “public religion” and of the “privatization of religion” because the latter “allows politics itself to become privatized and selfabsorbed.”44 An observation flowing from this is that religious freedom and pluralism bring about various religious associations in modern societies that may represent a certain kind of publicness and “a political role” for religion in modern differentiated societies.45 According to Casanova, the tendency toward privatization of religion not only leads, paradoxically, to the process of deprivatization of religion, but also is transformed into “a prescriptive normative theory of how religious institutions ought to behave in the modern world.”46 The coexistence of arguments for privatization and deprivatization forces us to reconsider the public character of religion in modern societies. In other words, the challenge from privatization and the likely dangers of public religion do not necessarily remove the public roles of religion. Rather, they raise the serious question of how it is appropriate for religion to participate in public life, especially in political life (in Casanova’s terms, “the legitimate forms of public religions”). Michael Perry also expresses his concern about the issue of religion in politics: “It is not that religious convictions are brought to bear in public political debate that should worry us, but how they are sometimes brought to bear.”47 The issue of religion in political life now becomes more and more a focus of attention and debate, involving questions such as how religious believers should behave in the public life of modern societies and how they should express religious convictions in debating controversial political issues. It appears to me that in modern morally and religiously pluralistic societies, the problem of religious participation in politics emerges out of both the issue of religion in public moral life and the privatization thesis.

43

Cochran, 65. Ibid., 143. 45 Casanova, 55. 46 Ibid., 38. 47 Michael J. Perry, Religion in Politics: Constitutional and Moral Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997),���� 49. ��� 44

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Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China

To clarify the public roles of religion in the areas of public moral life and political life, one helpful idea is John Rawls’s distinction between background culture and public political culture in his version of political liberalism: background culture as the culture of civil society (the culture of the social, not of the political), which includes all kinds of comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines, and public political culture as the political institutions of a constitutional regime and the public traditions of their interpretation, and so on.48 Furthermore, Rawls acknowledges that, in the background culture, “religious, philosophical, and moral considerations of many kind may here properly play a role.”49 The fact of reasonable pluralism of comprehensive doctrines in modern democratic societies, as I have argued, does not deny the contribution of religious values in the culture of civil society, on the one hand, but does ask for the limitation of the public roles of religion and raise the controversial issue of religion in political life, on the other.50 Today, in the context of modern democratic societies, the problem of religion’s appropriate role in public political culture appears more debatable than its role in the moral life of civil society. I may sum up the publicness of religion in terms of its two public roles. One role is religion’s contribution to public moral and communal life in civil society in terms of religious understanding of the human good. Let us call it the “moral role of religion.” The other role concerns the proper relationship between religion and political life in terms of the legitimacy of religion’s involvement in politics. Let us call it the “political role of religion.” In the following chapter I will turn to the debate on this political role.

48

John Rawls, Political Liberalism, paperback edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 13–14. 49 Ibid., 215. While Rawls regards comprehensive doctrines in the background culture as non-public reasons compared to public reasons in public political culture, I hold that the moral role of doctrines (including religious doctrines) in civil society is one kind of public role. 50 This limitation might be understood as treating religious doctrines only as one of various conceptions of the good that should not be favored among others by the liberal state, avoiding the religious domination of public life or a combination of religious with political ideology—the potential dangers of public religion that Cochran suggests.

Chapter 2

Liberal Restraint on Religion in Public Political Culture The issue of religion in public political culture has received much attention and debate recently among Western academics. There are generally two approaches to this issue. Liberals question whether religion should have any part in public political culture in modern pluralistic democratic societies, since they are deeply concerned with the private–public distinction and the legitimacy of religion in public life. While facing the challenge of the liberal call for restraints on religion in political life, and the tendency to curb and even privatize religion in the public realm, their critics among religious scholars reaffirm religious values and defend their expression in the public political debate. There are also some criticisms of the liberal position from a nonreligious perspective. While I refer to various scholars who engage in this debate on the liberal side, I concentrate my study on the more elaborately articulated theories presented by John Rawls and Robert Audi. 2.1

From Reasonable Disagreement to Reasonable Agreement

To consider the appropriate relationship between religion and public political culture, for political liberals the first thing is to assess the fact of the diversity of conceptions of the good in modern pluralistic societies. It is this moral and religious pluralism that raises the “legitimacy” problem of religious involvement in public political discourse in liberal democracy. For Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, this diversity means “moral disagreement”: “In a pluralist society, comprehensive moral theories neither can nor should win the agreement of all citizens.” In Larmore’s words, “reasonable people tend naturally to disagree about the comprehensive nature of the good life.” It becomes “a characteristic theme of modern thought.” And, as the object of reasonable disagreement, pluralism points to “the multiple sources of value.” This value-conflict makes us disagree not only over the path to salvation in the realm of religion but also over the “meaning” of life and the deeper aspects of morality. 

Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, “Moral Conflict and Political Consensus,” Ethics 101 (1990), 64–88.  Larmore, 153, 54.  Ibid., 155–7, 168.

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Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China

To distinguish this diversity from the simple fact of pluralism, Rawls calls it “the fact of reasonable pluralism,” that is, “a pluralism of incompatible yet reasonable comprehensive doctrines” that characterizes modern democratic society. Moreover, the fact of reasonable pluralism is a permanent feature of democratic culture. The burden of judgment or the exercise of human reason in the free institutions of a constitutional democratic regime brings about this pluralism, where the citizens hold diverse views on the good of human life. Although different terms—“moral disagreement,” “reasonable disagreement,” and “reasonable pluralism”—are applied to this sort of moral and religious pluralism in modern democratic society, one common point among liberals is the affirmation of the fact of conflicting yet reasonable moral, religious and philosophical views about the good life in modern democratic societies. Indeed, we cannot avoid this fundamental moral disagreement while deliberating on political issues. A liberal democratic regime, on the one hand, is to guarantee the free exercise of people’s various philosophical and religious views of the ideals of life, and this fact of diversity demands public political justification through which the fundamental political principles can be shared by reasonable yet diverse people, on the other. This understanding of liberal democracy leads us to two aspects of liberalism: liberty and equality, on the one hand, and public reasonableness, on the other. As Stephen Macedo suggests: “Liberal, democratic politics is not only about individual rights and limited government, in other words, it is also about public justification: reason-giving and reason-demanding, and the insistence that power be backed by reasons.” Part of liberalism, therefore, is to accept and maintain moral pluralism in liberal democracy as well as to treat the problems raised by pluralism itself, especially the problem of how people arrive at agreement on fundamental political principles even when they disagree over the ideals of life.



Rawls, Political Liberalism, xviii, 36. I������������ bid., xviii. ������  For the protection of the free exercise of various ideals, Jeremy Waldron puts it, “a liberal society is envisaged as one in which people will practice and pursue a variety of opposing and incommensurable life-styles” (Jeremy Waldron, “Theoretical Foundations of Liberalism,” Philosophical Quarterly 37 (1987),������������������������������� 127��������������������������� –�������������������������� 50������������������������ ). Also, Bruce Ackerman says that “Political liberalism is a revolutionary doctrine, based on a radical idea—that men and women of different beliefs can establish a fair political system that grants all participants the equal right to live their own lives in their own way.” Bruce Ackerman, “Political Liberalisms,” Journal of Philosophy 91���������������������������������������� /��������������������������������������� 7 (1994), 364–86. In addition, Stephen Macedo takes two reasons in support of this view: the permanent fact of diversity, and respect for citizens as free and equal moral beings. See Stephen Macedo, “The Politics of Justification,” Political Theory 18�������������������� /������������������� 2 (1990), 28������� 0������ –����� 304��.  Stephen Macedo, “In Defense of Liberal Public Reason: Are Slavery and Abortion Hare Cases?,” in Robert P. George and Christopher Wolfe�������� (������ eds��� )��, Natural Law and Public Reason (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2000), 1����� 1���� –��� 49�. 



Liberal Restraint on Religion in Public Political Culture

21

As Donald Moon points out, as a response to moral pluralism, political liberalism is a strategy for “constructing political order under conditions of moral pluralism” as well as seeking to “bracket” differences among individuals and groups in the search for common values and principles on the basis of which their “interchange of giving and taking” can be regulated in a way that is fully acceptable to each. This sort of liberal pursuit of widely affirmed and shared political values by reasonable people with a variety of different religious and philosophical commitments in a diverse society, in Macedo’s view, is a movement from reasonable disagreement about their ultimate religious and philosophical ideals to reasonable agreement about basic political values, rights and institutions. Macedo holds that this is political liberalism’s virtue: “it focuses our attention on shared political values without requiring or expecting agreement on ultimate ends or a comprehensive set of moral values governing all of our lives.” Larmore further locates “reasonable disagreement” in the heart of political liberalism, since he claims that comprehensive liberalism, such as Kantian and Millian conceptions of liberalism, were unable to solve adequately “the political problem of reasonable disagreement about the good life.”10 He suggests that the reforming vision of liberalism—political liberalism11—is right to seek fundamental political principles accepted by diverse yet reasonable people, for it is a political doctrine instead of “a general ‘philosophy of man’ and a ‘comprehensive moral ideal’.”12 In the following, I will examine how Rawls’s political liberalism articulates a political conception of justice, and his principles on religious doctrine in the public political culture of a liberal democracy. 2.2

Rawls’s Three Principles on Religious Doctrine in Liberal Politics

As Rawls himself acknowledges, “the fact of reasonable pluralism” is a starting point of his political liberalism: “It is the fact of reasonable pluralism that leads— at least me—to the idea of a political conception of justice and so to the idea of political pluralism.”13 This fact marks the problem of political liberalism: “How is it possible that deeply opposed though reasonable comprehensive doctrines may  J. Donald Moon, Constructing Community: Moral Pluralism and Tragic Conflicts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 8.  Stephen Macedo, “Liberal Civic Education and Religious Fundamentalism: The Case of God v. John Rawls?,” Ethic�s 105 �������������������� (1995), 468–96. 10 Larmore, 168. 11 As Larmore suggests, this vision is represented in the work of Rawls and Larmore himself, especially the latter’s Patterns of Moral Complexity. 12 See Larmore, 228. 13 Rawls, Political Liberalism, xlvii�������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������� . This ������������������������������������������������ idea is also recognized by other scholars. For instance, Macedo affirms, “Rawls’ political liberalism starts with the conviction that reasonable people disagree deeply and permanently about the religious beliefs and philosophical ideals of life” (Macedo, “In Defense of Liberal Public Reason,” 22�� ���� )�.

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live together and all affirm the political conception of a constitutional regime?”14 In other words, it is to work out a conception of political justice that may be endorsed by citizens with different views of the good. Here, by contrast with reasonable comprehensive doctrines, political liberalism is concerned with the problem of political justice instead of the highest good.15 In a special case, Rawls distinguishes the sense of justice from the love of humankind. Love, as a moral and religious ideal, is comprehensive. In Rawls’s view, love is manifest by “the greater intensity and pervasiveness of this desire, and in a readiness to fulfill all natural duties in addition to that of justice, and even to go beyond their requirements.”16 For Rawls, love and benevolence in seeking the good of beloved individuals and prompting acts of supererogation, are second-order notions compared with the sense of justice.17 Addressing only the fundamental political questions, the conception of political justice is not comprehensive but “independent of the opposing and conflicting philosophical and religious doctrines”—a so-called “freestanding view.”18 Rawls’s concern has moved from conceptions of the human good (including the ideal of love) to political justice. Rawls’s strategy is to tolerate and accept the diversity of people’s comprehensive moral and religious doctrines, on the one hand, and to articulate political conceptions that are independent of comprehensive doctrines—and yet could be acknowledged by each doctrine in its own way—on the other. As Samuel Scheffler points out, “Rawls combines respect for the facts of disagreement and diversity with a reluctance to rely on any controversial moral premises.”19 This leads to Rawls’s conception of justice as “political,” focusing on the overlapping consensus of comprehensive doctrines while avoiding reliance on any one of these doctrines. Within the framework of his political liberalism, I will summarize Rawls’s positions on reasonable comprehensive doctrines (religious doctrine in particular) in terms of three principles: the principle of independence, the principle of rights, and the principle of introduction. With reference to the relation of this “freestanding’ political justice to comprehensive religious or secular doctrines, I will call it the “principle of independence.” As Rawls himself explains: “A political conception of justice is what I call freestanding when it is not presented as derived from, or as part 14 Rawls, Political Liberalism, xx. He ������������������������������������������������ also says in the same place: “The conception of political liberalism is to work out a conception of political justice for a constitutional democratic regime that the plurality of reasonable doctrines—always a feature of the culture of a free democratic regime—might endorse.” 15 See Rawls, Political Liberalism, xxvii�� �������. 16 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999), 167. 17 Ibid. 18 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 9���� –��� 10. 19 Samuel Scheffler, “The Appeal of Political Liberalism,” Ethics 105/1 (1994), 4���� –��� 22�.



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23

of, any comprehensive doctrine.”20 His political liberalism distinguishes this self-standing political justice from a comprehensive doctrine, either religious or nonreligious. In this “independence” sense, a political conception of justice belongs to “political autonomy,” so in political liberalism, Rawls claims that “we try to avoid natural or psychological views of this kind, as well as theological or secular doctrines.”21 Here we may find that, with respect to a political conception of justice, Rawls treats religious and secular doctrines equally. They do not provide public reasons in the same way. Secular ideas and reasons “belong to first philosophy and moral doctrine, and fall outside of the domain of the political.”22 Political justice, in serving the basic structure of society and the public discussion, appeals to neither religious authority nor secular views.23 Rawls regards this as a central feature of political liberalism. In Rawls, the second principle regarding religious doctrine in liberal societies is its being freely accepted in background culture or its free exercise in civil society in terms of liberty of conscience and constitutional rights. I will call this the “principle of rights.” As we have seen, a modern democratic society is marked by the pluralism of reasonable comprehensive doctrines. Thus any kind of doctrine, religious or nonreligious, will be freely accepted, whether or not it is actively asserted or denied.24 Obviously, with regard to citizens’ free acceptance and exercise of religious doctrines, Rawls stresses that there are no restrictions on background culture and on how religious doctrines are to be expressed.25 The free expression of religious doctrines in background culture is to protect the private religious convictions of individuals. This private sphere deserves full rights and freedom in liberal societies. This principle is affirmed by the liberal political conception of justice in terms of the “liberty of conscience” and “freedom of thought:” “Whatever comprehensive religious, philosophical, or moral views we hold are also freely accepted, politically speaking; for given liberty of conscience and freedom of thought, we impose any such doctrine on ourselves.”26 It is also specified by the “basic constitutional rights and liberties” of free and equal citizens.27 The rights 20

Rawls, Political Liberalism, xliv. Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” University of Chicago Law Review 64 (1997),��������� 765����� –���� 807�. 22 Ibid., 780. 23 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 44, ���������� 224–5�. 24 Rawls states, “We try, so far as we can, neither to assert nor to deny any particular comprehensive religious, philosophical, or moral view, or its associated theory of truth and the status of values”��������� (������� �������� Rawls, Political Liberalism, 150). ����� 25 See ������� Rawls, Political Liberalism, ������������������������������������������������� 221, n. 8, and ���������������������������������� Rawls, ��������������������������� “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” 784.� 26 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 221��� –�� 2. 27 Ibid.,����� 222. 21

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to embrace religious convictions and to conduct religious practice are one of his concerns in political liberalism: “It treats the grounds of the basic religious and political liberties, and of the basic rights of citizens in civil society.”28 In political liberalism, the political conception of justice contains basic rights and liberties and gives them a special priority. The right to religious belief and thus religious freedom, as a basic right of citizen, ought to be guaranteed in a liberal democracy. Rawls’s liberal principles of constitutional rights and liberties not only protect individuals’ rights to affirm any religious doctrine and to express their religious convictions as religious believers, but also concern their basic rights and liberties as citizens. In Rawls’s view, although the principles of political justice apply to the basic structure, rather than directly to the internal life of churches, they do “impose certain essential constraints that bear on ecclesiastical governance” and “protect the rights and liberties of their members by the constraints to which all churches and associations are subject;” for instance, intolerance is not allowed within churches toward their members.29 These are restrictions on associations within the basic structure imposed indirectly by the principles of political justice. In this sense Rawls agrees to the separation of church and state since “it protects religion from the state and the state from religion; it protects citizens from their churches and citizens from one another.”30 These two principles for the place of religious doctrine in modern democratic pluralistic societies assert their free expression in background culture but limit them in the construction of public political values.31 With regard to the relationship between political issues and comprehensive moral or religious doctrines, the task of liberalism is, on the one hand, to seek the political principles that are shared and publicly justified by reasonable people by acknowledging, though not depending on, their incompatible reasonable comprehensive ideals. On the other hand, liberalism’s task is to legitimate the process of political decisions: to justify in what sense the comprehensive doctrines (religious views in particular) could be involved in public political discourse.32 This leads to Rawls’s 28

Ibid.,����� xxx. Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited������������ ,����������� ”���������� 789, 791. 30 Ibid.������ , 795. 31 The liberal acceptance of pluralism allows free space for religious expression, but pluralism also demands that no religious doctrine would become the basis of a fundamental political principle. 32 For this point I would refer to Macedo’s analysis about how Rawls divides the process of justification in two stages to restrict the scope of political justification: “First, there is the stage of construction, in which we leave aside the controversial elements of our comprehensive personal perspective because we recognize that reasonable people with whom we wish to form a political association reject them … Only after construction is complete do we enter a second stage in which the question of acceptance comes to the fore. At this second stage, our controversial religious and other personal convictions are reengaged’ (Macedo, “The Politics of Justification�������� ,������� ”������ 290�� ). 29



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25

third principle on religious doctrine in public political culture, the “principle of introduction,” which will be treated under his ideal of public reason. One specific feature of Rawls’s political liberalism is his recognition of reasonable pluralism and the idea of public reason. These two notions deal with political questions under pluralistic conditions in modern democratic society. They are also crucial for understanding his positions on the religion–politics issue. Against the background of pluralism, I have discussed his main ideas on religious doctrine under the two principles concerning the place of religion both in political justice and in civil society. Now I will explore his conception of liberal public reason, which contains Rawls’s treatment of the issue of religion in public political culture.33 The fact of reasonable pluralism demands a public justification of reasons in a debate on fundamental political questions. Since any comprehensive doctrine is acceptable only to certain citizens, the discussion of fundamental political questions cannot be grounded on any such doctrine. However, in Rawls’s view, political justice can serve as a basis for public reason and justification in that it may be expected to be endorsed by all citizens on fundamental questions given the fact of reasonable pluralism in democratic culture.34 So, for Rawls, “the aim of political liberalism is to uncover the conditions of the possibility of a reasonable public basis of justification on fundamental questions.”35 Arising from a political conception of justice, Rawls’s ideal of public reason, through which political values are shared by all reasonable citizens as free and equal, applies to citizens in public political discussions concerning constitutional essentials and questions of basic justice.36 This public political forum includes 33

Lawrence B. Solum emphasizes the relevance of the ideal of public reason to the issue of religion in public political debate. He says, “An investigation of the idea of public reason may illuminate the relationship between religion and politics’”(Lawrence B. Solum, “Constructing an Ideal of Public Reason,” San Diego Law Review 30 (1993), 729–����� 62��� ). Solum also writes, “one important strand of the debate over the role of religion in the public square concerns the notion of ‘public reason’—the common reason of the public in their capacity as citizens constituting a polity” (Lawrence B. Solum, “The Religious Voice in the Public Square: Novel Public Reasons,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review ��� 29 (1996), 1459–���� 85�� ). 34 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 9, 137. 35 Ibid.���� , 9. 36 The ideal of public reason plays a central place in Rawls’s political liberalism. His position on public reason has received much attention and wide discussion. Robert Westmoreland mentions two types of liberalism: the liberal ideal of equality in the case of Ronald Dworkin and so-called “public reason liberalism” such as Rawls’s political liberalism (Robert Westmoreland, “The Truth about Public Reason,” Law and Philosophy 18 (1999), 271–96). Also, Onora O’Neill says: “Rawls’s account of political liberalism is supported by public reason.” Onora O’Neill, “Political Liberalism and Public Reason: A Critical Note of John Rawls’s Political Liberalism,” Philosophical Review 106/3 (1997), 411–28.

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three parts: the discourse of judges in their decisions, the discourse of government officials, and the discourse of candidates for public office.37 This ideal is expressed by the liberal principle of legitimacy: “to live politically with others in the light of reasons all might reasonably be expected to endorse.”38 It is also this principle that requires religious citizens to accept the restraints imposed by public reason. One question arises here about public reason: how should we treat our reasonable comprehensive doctrine, including our religious convictions, in the public political deliberation? In Political Liberalism, Rawls proposes to understand the limits of public reason in two ways, namely, “exclusive” and “inclusive” views. The exclusive view of public reason requires the exclusion of reasons framed in terms of comprehensive doctrines in debating fundamental political issues, while the inclusive view allows citizens to cite their comprehensive doctrine as the ground of political values if they do so to reinforce the ideal of public reason itself.39 At that stage Rawls was inclined to prefer the inclusive view, for it may further the ideal of public reason. He revised his views on the ideal of public reason in his later writings, especially the introduction to the paperback edition of Political Liberalism (1996) and “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (1997). In his revised view, or the “wide view of public reason,” Rawls permits comprehensive doctrines, religious or nonreligious, to be introduced into public political discussion at any time, subject to the proviso that “in due course, we give properly public reasons to support the principles and policies our comprehensive doctrine is said to support.”40 Now it seems unfair to criticize Rawls for relegating religious convictions thoroughly to the private sphere, for it is inaccurate to regard his positions as a total exclusion of religious discourse in the public realm of a liberal democracy. According to his wide view of public reason, Rawls explicitly allows that citizens and public officials may appeal publicly to reasonable religious or nonreligious doctrines in any and all public political discussions, although he does give certain constraints on that appeal. That is, political decisions should not solely be supported by the reasons rooted in comprehensive doctrines, but should be sufficiently supported by proper public reason as well.41 Even though Rawls permits the introduction of reasonable religious and secular doctrines into public political culture, he still maintains the requisite idea that public political fora be 37 See�������� Rawls, Political Liberalism, 214–53 and Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited�������� ,������� ”������ 767.� 38 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 243. 39 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 247. 40 Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited������� ,������ ”����� 776�. 41 Ibid.��������������������������������������������������������� , 783���������������������������������������������������� –��������������������������������������������������� 4.������������������������������������������������� In the introduction to the paperback edition of Political Liberalism, Rawls also states this principle: “such doctrines may be introduced in public reason at any time, provided that in due course public reasons, given by a reasonable political conception, are presented sufficient to support whatever the comprehensive doctrines are introduced to support” (������� Rawls, Political Liberalism, li–liii). ����������



Liberal Restraint on Religion in Public Political Culture

27

guided by the irreplaceable ideal of public reason. The principles and policies advocated by the comprehensive doctrines should be supported by public reasons as well. Thus Rawls restricts rather than prohibits religious argument in public political discourse. As Paul J. Weithman puts it: Religious reason cannot play the role of public reason, Rawls argues, and a body of religious social thought cannot serve as a public intellectual resource in that capacity. Religion is not, however, completely prohibited from public or political discussion. It is not therefore to be completely privatized, in Rawls’ view. Religion can serve as an intellectual resource in political argument, but its use is constrained … Rawls’ discussion of public reason does morally constrain but does not prohibit religious political argument, rather he does allow religion a certain role in public discourse.42

Referring to Rawls’s principles on religious doctrine in liberal politics, Weithman correctly assesses Rawls’s positions on religious argument, its limits in forming political conceptions of justice and its possible role in public political deliberation under some restrictions, even though the restrictions are disputed among scholars. Rawls acknowledges that reasonable political conceptions of justice and the ideal of public reason do not necessarily bring about or guarantee general agreement on particular issues. Here he insists that in a just constitutional regime, citizens vote on relevant issues in accordance with the idea of public reason: “Citizens learn and profit from conflict and argument, and when their arguments follow public reason, they instruct and deepen society’s public culture.”43 For instance, in the political debate on the abortion issue in the United States, Rawls considers it in terms of three important political values: the due respect for human life, the ordered reproduction of political society over time, including the family in some form, and finally the equality of women as equal citizens.44 The reasonable balance of these values leads Rawls to believe that during the first three months of pregnancy (trimester) a woman should be given the right to decide whether to end her pregnancy or not. This is rooted in Rawls’s belief that at the early stage of pregnancy the “political value of the equality of women is overriding, and this right is required to give it substance and force.”45 In debating political questions, including abortion (which is a political issue in the United States, though it is generally not considered one in other Western 42

Paul J. Weithman, “Rawlsian Liberalism and the Privatization of Religion: Three Theological Objections Considered,” Journal of Religious Ethics 22/1 (1994),������� 3����� –28. Andrew Williams also supports this point: “Though Rawls’s view restricts appeal to even reasonable comprehensive doctrines, it still permits them to play some limited role in political deliberation’ (Andrew Williams, “The Alleged Incompleteness of Public Reason,” Res Publica 6 (2000), 199������� ���������� –21���� 1��� ). 43 Rawls, Political Liberalism, lvii. 44 Ibid.����������� , ��������� 243 n.32. 45 Ibid.

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democracies), Rawls’s call for reliance on public reason, with its appeal to political conceptions, their ideals, principles and value, tends to stress political values such as the rights and equality of women in deciding abortion. “It would not be reasonable to deny women a right to an early abortion because such a denial would not show a commitment to the rights of women.”46 To resolve the controversial abortion issue, Rawls’s strategy is to turn to the political value of the rights of women, suspending the disputed question as to the moral status of the early fetus. As Daniel Dombrowski explains: “It is clear that Rawls does not want to settle the matter on the basis of metaphysical claims concerning the status of the early fetus, but rather in political terms.”47 Under these circumstances, even though a comprehensive doctrine such as the Catholic opposition to the right of abortion is allowed to engage in the abortion debate and express its particular position, it is still required to get in line with public reason: “That the Church’s nonpublic reason requires its members to follow its doctrine is perfectly consistent with their honoring public reason.”48 Further, Rawls emphasizes that a doctrine would be seen as “cruel and oppressive,” and thus unreasonable, if it denies the duly qualified right of women to abortion in the first trimester except in the case of rape and incest.49 He writes: “The only comprehensive doctrines that run afoul of public reason are those that cannot support a reasonable balance [or ordering] of political value [on the issue].”50 Regarding the relevance of personal private values to public political values, Macedo’s ideas are in agreement with Rawls’s wide view of public reason. Macedo’s premise is the inevitability of personal moral ideals’ involvement in politics.51 His principle of public justification is neither necessarily to include or to exclude any particular religious and moral doctrine from politics: “The success of liberal public justification does not require the common embrace of one comprehensive moral doctrine, but neither does it allow the separation of public and private spaces of values.”52 In his view, political justification in political liberalism does allow comprehensive moral and religious views to engage in the political realm, even though this justification does not rely on any particular

46 Daniel A. Dombrowski, Rawls and Religion: The Case for Political Liberalism (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 2001), 127. 47 Ibid. 48 Rawls, Political Liberalism, lvii. ��������������������������������������������������������� As ��������������������������������������������������� Perry states, “Rawls believes that the abortion controversy—the question of what public policy regarding abortion ought to be—should be resolved according to the ideal of public reason.” Perry, Religion in Politics, 60. 49 See Rawls, Political Liberalism, 243–4 ����������� n.32. 50 Rawls, Political Liberalism, lv–lvi, ������������� n.31. 51 He says, “Each of us carries our comprehensive moral views with us in politics” and “our deepest convictions and commitments are at risk in political controversies” (Macedo, “The Politics of Justification�������� ,������� ”������ 291�� ). 52 Ibid.������ , 292.



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29

account of religious or moral commitments and does not expect agreement among these conceptions of the good life.53 This idea of inclusive public reason is explained by Solum as follows: “Policy A might be justified by public reason P and non public reason Q. So long as P provided a sufficient justification for A, the inclusion of Q would not violate an inclusionary principle satisfied by P.”54 This principle would allow citizens to propose nonpublic reasons in public political debate only if sufficient public reasons were also given. Here, he does treat religious and secular doctrines equally; even though both may contain deep and controversial beliefs, “a liberal ideal of public reason ought not to exclude religious beliefs and allow secular beliefs.”55 Solum suggests two circumstances in which nonpublic reasons may be given: “(1) if the nonpublic reason were the foundation for a public reason, and (2) if the nonpublic reason were an additional sufficient justification for a policy that would be given an independent and sufficient justification by a public reason.”56 This inclusionary principle, like exclusive public reason, asks for sufficient public reasons in debating political issues, but the inclusive one allows “a specified role for nonpublic reasons.”57 In addition, to allow nonpublic reasons in public political debate under some circumstances would have more advantages than the exclusionary principle. The principle of exclusion implies a certain kind of intolerance, whereas the inclusionary one expresses “the ideal of full respect for the autonomy of fellow citizens” since it supposes that “citizens have the ability to listen with tolerance and even learn from others’ religious and moral beliefs.”58 Solum concludes that “the principle of including public reasons might do a better job of fostering civility and tolerance than would the exclusionary principle.”59 In advocating an ideal of inclusive public reason, Solum distinguishes between public debate by private citizens and by public officials in their official capacity. Public political debate by private citizens may include their moral and religious commitments besides giving public reasons. “The requirement of free public reason does not forbid political advocacy on religious grounds by churches, by individuals, or by political candidates.”60 In this case, while citizens introduce their diverse conceptions of the good in public discussion, they should show

53

Macedo, “Liberal Civic Education and Religious Fundamentalism: The Case of God v. John Rawls?,” 495 ��� 54 Solum, “Constructing an Ideal of Public Reason������� ,������ ”����� 747�. 55 Ibid.������ , 746. 56 Ibid.������ , 748. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., 750. 59 Ibid.������ , 749. 60 Lawrence B. Solum, “Faith and Justice,” Depaul Law Review 39 (1990), 108�� 3�– 106�.

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tolerance and respect for the freedom and equality of fellow citizens.61 By contrast, public officials in their official capacity should employ the principle of excluding nonpublic reasons. “Judicial decisions made or justified on the basis of reasons that are not publicly accessible, for example, on the basis of sectarian religious premises, would be disrespectful of the freedom and equality of citizens.”62 Officials of public institutions are not allowed to express their personal moral and religious doctrines as the official reasons for state action, even though they “retain their full freedoms when they speak in their capacity as private citizens.”63 Therefore, in Solum, two circumstances require the exclusion of nonpublic reasons: public officials speaking in their official capacity, and the deliberative and justificatory process in political decision making. In the latter case, it ought to exclude explicit direct reliance on a religious foundation for public reason, but allow indirect or foundational reliance on nonpublic reasons or being causally influenced by them.64 Similarly, while giving a more positive role to religious convictions in resolving political questions,65 Kent Greenawalt insists that in discussing political issues legislators avoid explicit reliance on any controversial religious or comprehensive views, but should mainly employ public reasons.66 Legislators are thus asked to exercise more self-restraint in political decisions than ordinary citizens. Even though they may be affected by “underlying religious grounds” and thus occasionally rely on religious convictions in special cases, they ought to translate their convictions into publicly accessible terms to form their arguments about the political issues concerned.67 The above descriptions of the positions of Rawls, Macedo, Solum, and Greenawalt on the role of religion in public political life give weight to grounds rooted in public reasons. They do not exclude religious reasons from politics, yet place restraints on them in the political process, especially in the case of public officials acting in their public capacity. This kind of restraint, yet without total exclusion of religion from public political culture concerning religion in politics, indeed demonstrates the compatibility between religion and democratic institutions. Recall here Rawls’s belief that there is no war between religion and democracy, since religion may

61

See Solum, “Constructing an Ideal of Public Reason�������� ,������� ”������ 752��.

62 ��������������������������������� Solum, “Faith and Justice�������� ,������� ”������ 1093�. 63

Solum, “Constructing an Ideal of Public Reason������� ,” 753�. See Solum, “Faith and Justice���������� ,” 1091��� –�� 2�. 65 I will give more details on Kent Greenawalt’s positions on religious convictions in political issues in Chapter 3. We shall see various levels of religious convictions in political issues through his discussions. 66 See Kent Greenawalt, Private Consciences and Public Reasons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 157–8. 67 Ibid., 158. 64



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“endorse a constitutional democratic society and recognize its public reason.”68 Rawls recognizes that reasonable comprehensive doctrines (including religious doctrines) do not reject the essentials of a constitutional democratic polity, but may support the political institutional values (such as citizens’ equal basic rights and liberties). Supported by an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines, political conceptions of justice frame democratic political principles and ideals.69 It is in this sense that political liberalism differs from Enlightenment liberalism, which historically attacked Christianity.70 So, for Rawls, it is possible that citizens affirm both a comprehensive doctrine (particularly religious doctrine) and a political conception. 2.3

Audi’s Restraint on Religion in Public Political Debate

Another conception of restraint on religion in public political debate is Audi’s appeal to the idea of adequate secular reason. He starts with exploring the principles of separation of church and state and then applies them to the issue of religion in the political arena. He regards the avoidance of both the state’s establishment of religion and the state’s impairing of religious liberty in a free and democratic society as the core of the separation doctrine. He develops this “institutional separation doctrine” into three principles: the libertarian principle (the state’s permission to practice any religion within certain limits), the equalitarian principle (the state giving no preference to one religion over another), and the neutrality principle (the state having no positive or negative preference for religion or the religious).71 Since Audi sees religious freedom as a constitutive foundation for liberal democracy, he attempts to give full freedom to religious practice, and yet restricts religious participation in politics. For him, the protection of religious liberty requires not only the three principles of institutional separation, but also “an institutional principle of political neutrality,” which restricts churches’ engagement in political issues: “churches have a prima facie obligation to abstain from supporting candidates for office or pressing for special public offices, especially the kind typically included in the platform of a particular party.”72 68

Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited������� ,������ ”����� 803�. See ibid.���������������������� , 801, 805 and�������� Rawls, ������� Political Liberalism, p������������������������ 219. At his point Rawls distinguishes reasonable doctrines from unreasonable doctrines which rejects the ideas of public reason and deliberative democracy and “in which reasonable political values are overridden.” Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited������������ ,����������� ”���������� 805, 802�. 70 Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” 804��. 71 See Robert Audi, “Liberal Democracy and the Place of Religion in Politics,” in Robert Audi and Nicholas Wolterstorff, Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 4–8. 72 Audi, “The Separation of Church and State and the Obligations of Citizenship��� ,��”� 274�. 69

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Later, Audi develops this principle concerning churches’ political actions under the separation of church and state into two principles: a principle of ecclesiastical political neutrality and a principle of clerical political neutrality, which restate the obligation on the part of churches and clergy to “abstain from supporting candidates for public office or pressing for laws and public policies that restrict human conduct” in a free and democratic society.73 Here, Audi makes his point on the issue of religious liberty and churches’ political actions: “protection of religious liberty, and certainly of governmental neutrality toward religious institutions, is better served if, normally, churches as such abstain from political action.”74 Audi then proposes two principles of civic virtue concerning law and public policy advocacy: the principle of secular rationale (the justification principle) and the principle of secular motivation (the virtue principle): “One has a prima facie obligation not to advocate or support any law or public policy that restricts human conduct,” unless one not only “has, and is willing to offer,” but also “is sufficiently motivated by (normatively),” adequate secular reason for this advocacy or support.75 Only actions in accord with these two principles are regarded as both justified and virtuous.76 The principles are applied to citizens in public political advocacy, legislators, judges, and governmental officials in their public political advocacy and official capacities. For Audi, these two principles are not only to protect religious liberty but also to show adequate respect to the nonreligious. In order to preserve religious liberty and other liberties in a free and democratic society, adequate secular reason is needed to support and advocate restrictive laws or policies, and religious reasons are subject to restraints in political advocacy.77 Since Audi allows religious arguments in political advocacy, yet requires adequate secular reason, his strategy is to accept the overlap and “mutually enriching relation” between religiously and secularly grounded obligations.78 Audi’s measure of restraint on the use of religious reasons in political advocacy demands that the rational religious citizen carry out a principle of theo-ethical equilibrium, namely, “a rational integration between religious deliverances and insights and, on the other hand, secular ethical considerations.”79 This cooperation between the religious and the secular asks religious citizens not to give their religious reasons prior to the secular ones. “That cooperation requires that some secular reason play an essential role, but not that the person regard 73 38–47. 74 75 76 77 78 79

See Robert Audi, “Liberal Democracy and the Place of Religion in Politics,” Ibid., 38. Ibid., 25, 29. Ibid.,���� 33. ��� Audi, “The Separation of Church and State������������� ,������������ ”����������� 278, 294��. Audi, “Liberal Democracy,” 13. Ibid.,���� 21. ���



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that role as primary or take the secular to be more important than the religious or even independent of it.”80 A conscientious theist would not support coercive laws or public policies if he/she only grounds the support on religious arguments without reaching this equilibrium. If a religious citizen does not follow this principle, this will in Audi’s view lead to serious problems. For example, if an argument concerning abortion is religiously grounded and presented in a religious voice (for instance, the argument that abortion in the first trimester is killing a person), it “cannot convince conscientious people whose morality they otherwise fully respect to accept the point” and would produce “suspicion or resentment.”81 It seems unreasonable to require religious persons to put aside their religious views in public political actions, but they have a prima facie obligation to combine their religious reasons with secular ones and at least to be motivated by the latter as well. At this point, Audi attempts to build up an integration of civic and religious virtues or, as he puts it, an “alignment between religious well-grounded and secular well-grounded moral standards.” Since adequate secular reasons are available to a religious person, to combine the religious and the secular harmoniously, Audi supposes, will not bring the person into disequilibrium in conforming to the principle of secular rationale.82 Even though Audi’s position on churches’ behavior toward the state does not deny their relevance to politics under some circumstances (for instance, it may encourage members’ participation in politics and clergy’s political positions in terms of their religious views), he still insists that “it is appropriate that clergy exercise restraint in touching political issues.”83 He also says that the two principles of civic virtues are inclusive: “It allows that one may have and be motivated by religious reasons as well as secular ones.”84 Religious convictions may provide intellectual sources of new ideas in elaborating one’s position for law and public policy. He states further: “separation of church and state doctrine does not require eliminating religious considerations or religious language from public life.”85 Audi agrees with the claim that as a source of human flourishing and as a stimulus to citizenship, religion has made positive contributions in liberal democracy.86 He suggests five major uses of religious arguments: expressive, communicative, persuasive, evidential, and heuristic. He adds that the use of religious argument in a liberal democracy should avoid undermining the principles 80

Robert Audi, Religious Commitment and Secular Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 112����������������������� (italics in original�� ���������� )�. 81 Audi, “Liberal Democracy,” 59 n. 25, 34. 82 In this claim, Audi appeals to “God’s omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence.” See ibid., 27. 83 Audi, “The Separation of Church and State������� ,������ ”����� 277�. 84 Audi, Religious Commitment and Secular Reason, 112. 85 Ibid., 69� ���. 86 Ibid., 3.

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of church–state separation, since the principles protect the freedom to use such arguments in the first place, as well as imposing constraints on religious arguments in democratic politics.87 Audi’s defense of institutional church–state separation—both in constraining religious reasons in public political debate and in giving an essential role to secular reasons in law and public policy advocacy—attempts to avoid a certain kind of dominance by religious reasons. For him, religious reasons in political advocacy may become a threatening force: “religious reasons for law and public policies, then, can threaten, or be widely sees as threatening, not only coercion in general but religious coercion: coercion of religious conduct.”88 At this point, as I understand him, Audi aims at achieving a balance among religious freedom without favoritism toward the religious, the proper use of religious arguments, and sufficient support for public policies motivated by secular reasons in public political advocacy. Therefore, for Audi, religious inspiration and motivation may be allowed in debating political issues, but justification of actions would be motivated by adequate secular reasons. He writes: in the order of justification, in the attempt to justify actions and beliefs—particularly action that would restrict human conduct—a commitment to a free and democratic society requires that one have, and be sufficiently motivated by, adequate secular reasons.89

From this point of view, Nicholas Wolterstorff regards Audi’s principles of religious argument in a liberal democracy as a kind of restraint on, rather than the elimination of, religious arguments from political positions: the citizen may also have and be motivated by religious reasons; that is entirely acceptable … But if the citizen does have religious reasons that motivate him, then he must in addition have non-religious reasons—“secular reasons.”90

Audi emphasizes that the principle of theo-ethical equilibrium is expected to be a major element in the civil virtue of the religious, and the principle of secular rationale to have good effect for people within a religious tradition.91 It seems to me that Audi’s main concern is religious individuals, especially their proper socialpolitical actions and the use of their religious reasons. The principle of secular rationale is a principle for “a plurality of peoples and faiths: its limited restrictions of religious expression by some are protections of liberty for others—including 87

Ibid., 75–8. Ibid, 101. 89 Audi, “The Separation of Church and State�������� ,������� ”������ 293��. 90 Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Audi on Religion, Politics, and Liberal Democracy,” in Audi and Wolterstorff, 150. 91 See Audi, “Liberal Democracy and the Place of Religion in Politics,” 21, 28. 88



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the religious. Liberalism’s constraints of some are liberations for others, and they are intended for the benefit of all.”92 Thus, moral and religious diversity forces Audi to place constraints on religious reasons in public expression so as to avoid imposing religious arguments on both the nonreligious and those of other religions, and thereby violating their liberty. Therefore, the principle of secular rationale, for Audi, is also to “facilitate good relations between different religious traditions and between religious and nonreligious people.”93 In other words, citizens, especially religious people, have to follow this principle in public political discourse in a religiously and morally pluralistic society. In the above I have presented two views of liberal restraint, by Rawls and Audi respectively. Both of them share the point that political justification should not depend on religiously based arguments: Audi requires that justification of political actions and values be based on adequate secular reasons: “Religiously grounded moral and political views that have not adequate and convincing basis in secular considerations are suspect.”94 Rawls does not rely on any particular comprehensive doctrine (including religious doctrine) in construction of the freestanding political conception of justice, but demands the support of public reasons in deciding fundamental political questions. In rejecting the total exclusion of the religious from public life, both Rawls and Audi to some extent allow religious political argument in the public realm, even though they set restraints on religious argument in democratic politics in different ways.95 Audi attempts to constrain the political activities of religious groups and spokespeople, and the use of religious reasons among religious citizens, requiring them to integrate religious and secular considerations in public political debate. Obviously, he will exclude the advocacy or support of restrictive laws or policies based on religious motives and reasons without being motivated by adequate secular reasons. For his part, Rawls allows the introduction of reasonable religious or secular doctrines into public political culture, provided that the principles and policies the doctrines advocate should be also sufficiently supported by public reason.

92

Ibid., 28. Ibid. 94 Audi, “The Separation of Church and State������� ,������ ”����� 295�. 95 Their liberal restraint on religious argument in democratic political life relegates it to a kind of “marginal” or “supporting” role. As Andrew Williams puts it, in Rawls’s ideal of liberal public reason, “comprehensive moral, religious and philosophical doctrines should play no more than an auxiliary or marginal role in the political life of constitutional democracies” (Andrew Williams,������������������������������������������������������ ����������������������������������������������������� “The Alleged Incompleteness of Public Reason��������� ,�������� ”������� 199��� ). Jonathan Chaplin also claims that in Rawls and Audi “religiously-based arguments play, at best, a supporting public role.” Jonathan Chaplin, “Beyond Liberal Restraint: Defending Religiously-Based Arguments in Law and Public Policy,” University of British Columbia Law Review 33 (2000), 617–��� 46�. 93

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Audi’s appeal to secular reason and Rawls’s public reason have different effects regarding their restraints on religion in democratic politics. As Philip Quinn points out, an advantage for the religious in Rawls’s ideal of public reason is that “it allows Rawls both to include religious beliefs within public reason in some circumstances and to exclude many secular beliefs from public reason.”96 In Jonathan Chaplin’s words, Rawls’s ideal does not “discriminate between religious and secular ‘comprehensive doctrines;’ it excludes both equally.”97 So in public political debate, Rawls does not treat religious and secular reasons differently, while Audi favors secular reason over religious reason, as being the only reasons that can be held in common by the religious and nonreligious alike. As Quinn and Chaplin argue, Rawls’s ideal of public reason and his inclusion of both religious and secular doctrines in “non-public” reasons do a better job than Audi’s ideal of adequate secular reason. If comprehensive doctrines are restrained in public political forum, fairness requires that they include both religious and secular ones (the latter might include, for instance, Utilitarianism). In this way, religious reasons are not disadvantaged because they are religious; rather, they are treated equally with nonreligious ones. Diverse religious and nonreligious comprehensive doctrines should be restrained in public political debate only because they might be sectarian and thus might not be accepted by other citizens from different backgrounds. In this sense, Audi’s principles of adequate secular reason on public political advocacy by the religious are more restrictive than Rawls’s “proviso” on the introduction of comprehensive doctrines in his wide view of public reason.98 In addition, it appears to me that both Audi and Rawls are concerned with the problem of the use of religious argument in public political discourse in religiously and morally pluralist liberal democracy. Both recognize that this sort of pluralism not only means that certain religious beliefs cannot serve as the basis of publicly accepted and justified political principles for the whole society, but also raises the problem of the proper place of religious argument in the political domain. Rawls considers religious pluralism together with philosophical and moral pluralism in modern democratic societies. Deriving from a political conception of justice that is independent of all kinds of comprehensive doctrines, public reason—which governs public political debate on fundamental political questions—is supposed to be acceptable by all reasonable people irrespective of their various doctrines. As I have discussed, one main reason for Audi’s proposal to be motivated by adequate secular reasons, and to restrict the use of religious reasons in political 96 ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Philip Quinn, “Political Liberalism and Their Exclusions of the Religious,” in Paul J. Weithman�������� (������ ed.��� )��, Religion and Contemporary Liberalism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 138���� ������� –��� 61�. 97 Chaplin, “Beyond Liberal Restraint: Defending Religiously-Based Arguments in Law and Public Policy�������������������������������������������� ,������������������������������������������� ”������������������������������������������ 641�������������������������������������� . This position is also held by Solum. 98 See similar ideas in James P Sterba, “Reconciling Public Reason and Religious Values,” Social Theory and Practice 25/1 (1999),������� 1–28��.



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actions, is the plurality among religions as well as between the religious and nonreligious. It seems that his principles of liberal constraint presuppose the divisiveness and exclusiveness of purely religious argument;99 restrictions on religious reasons would thus make intramural strife less likely to occur.100 When considering the place of religious arguments in public political discourse in democratic societies, both Rawls and Audi are committed to the fundamental liberal idea of respect for fellow citizens as free and equal. The fact of religious pluralism and the distinction between the religious and nonreligious compel them to give priority to mutual respect among various citizens in public political fora. Audi describes his principles of secular rationale and secular motivation in law and public policy advocacy as “principles of democratic citizenship:” the principle of secular rationale is, then, not unduly burdensome for religious people. Indeed, it may also be expected to have good effects for people within a religious tradition, for instance in different denominations, and possibly even in the same denominations, as well as to facilitate good relations between different religious traditions.101

Solum also gives priority to respect for freedom and equality of citizens, not only as a requirement of public reason in political decisions, but also regarding the introduction of religious views in debating political issues. For Rawls, when citizens engage in a public political forum and advocate any particular comprehensive doctrine on political issues, they should follow a “(moral) duty of civility” imposed by the ideal of democratic citizenship. This duty requires citizens to “explain to one another” those principles and policies they advocate in terms of the political values of public reason—that is, in terms that are capable of being embraced by all. It also requires them to “listen to others” in presenting their views in the public.102

99 See Chaplin’s analysis on Rawls and Audi’s liberal restraint, super quote. Audi himself says: “In some cases, good secular arguments for moral principles may be better reasons to believe those principles to be divinely enjoined than theological arguments for the principles, based on scripture or tradition’ (Audi, “Liberal Democracy,” 20–21). 100 Ibid.,����� 28. ���� 101 Audi, Religious Commitment and Secular Reason, 96. 102 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 217.

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Chapter 3

Criticisms of Liberal Restraint 3.1

Secular Perspectives

Rawls and Audi’s restraints on religion in liberal politics have been criticized both from secular and religious perspectives. In this section, to describe secular perspectives, I will study the “communitarian perspective” presented by Michael Sandel and the “incompleteness perspective” of David Reidy. In response to Rawls’s liberalism, Sandel raises the question of the relationship between the just and the good. He holds that justice and rights, which are both philosophical and political matters, cannot be detached from the conceptions of the good and the highest human ends. “A���������������������������������������� s a political matter, our deliberations about justice and rights cannot proceed without reference to the conceptions of the good that find expression in the many cultures and traditions within which those deliberations take place.�” Sandel presents three objections to the political conception of justice: 1) what reason remains for insisting that our reflections about justice should proceed without reference to our purposes and ends; 2) why must we “bracket,” or set aside, our moral and religious convictions, our conceptions of the good life; 3) why should not the principles of justice that govern the basic structure of society be based on our best understanding of the highest human ends? These questions are mainly concerned with the place of comprehensive moral and religious doctrines or the conception of the good in questions of justice and political issues. He maintains that “it is not always  To describe the criticisms of liberal restraint, I employ the terms “religious” and “secular.” Yet the distinction between them here is relative: secular criticism may contain some religious components that cannot be detached from religious foundations, even though they do not appeal to religious values directly.  These two strategies to criticize Rawls’s view of public reason are summarized by Andrew Williams as external and internal strategies respectively. The external strategy, or communitarian perspective, says that “Rawls’s view jeopardizes certain important values to such an extent that it is too costly to constitute a plausible conception of political legitimacy,” while the internal strategy claims that “Rawls’s position fails in its own terms because it is too difficult, or even impossible, to realize” (Andrew Williams, “The Alleged Incompleteness of Public Reason�������� ,������� ”������ 202�� ).  Michael J. Sandel������������������������ , “��������������������� A Response to Rawls��’� Political Liberalism,” in ����������� Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 2nd ed. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge ���������� University Press������������� ,������������ 1998������� ), 186.  Ibid., 191

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reasonable to bracket, or set aside for political purposes, claims arising from within comprehensive moral and religious doctrines.” Furthermore, in democratic societies, “the fact of reasonable pluralism” can be applied to questions of justice as well as to the conceptions of the good in the spheres of morality and religion. Thus, in modern democratic societies there are inevitably disagreements about justice, and this fact challenges the assumption of political liberalism that political conceptions of justice can be accepted by all reasonable citizens despite their different conceptions of the good. So we will have controversial principles of justice as well as disagreement about conceptions of the good in the public culture of democratic societies. Importantly, one of Sandel’s objections points to Rawls’s ideal of liberal public reason. Imposed by public reason, Rawls’s liberal restraints on religious doctrines in discussing fundamental political and constitutional questions is, for Sandel, “an unduly severe restriction that would impoverish political discourse and rule out important dimensions of public deliberation.” To see the limits of liberal public reason, he distinguishes two conceptions of mutual respect: liberal and deliberative. The liberal conception embodies the respect for the pluralism of citizens’ moral and religious convictions yet limits and sets them aside in political debate. For Sandel, this sort of liberal respect means that important resources will be missing in guiding political discourse and promoting the common good. In most circumstances, moral and religious views are linked with the moral dimension of some political and legal issues—for example, debating on legislation on issues such as abortion, pornography and euthanasia. The removal or restriction of these views in political deliberations will result in difficulties in making political decisions on the controversial political questions with a moral dimension. “Democratic politics cannot long abide a public life as abstract and decorous, as detached moral purposes.” In a case study on the abortion debate in the United States, Sandel shows the difficulty of preferring “political values” without reference to moral and religious values. For Sandel, political liberals attempt to set aside the controversy about the moral status of the fetus by putting moral and religious views regarding when 

Ibid., 196. Ibid., 202–10.  Ibid., 210.  Ibid., 196.  Ibid., 216. Sandel’s article “A Response to Rawls’s Political Liberalism,” originally published in the Harvard Law Review in 1994, therefore predates Rawls’s introduction to the paperback edition of that work (1996) as well as “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (1997). As I have noted earlier, Rawls revised his view of public reason, especially in these two later works, and allows the admission of religious and moral doctrines into public political fora, although still with some restraints. Even though Sandel does not take Rawls’s revised views into account, however, his criticism still has relevance. Rawls does not give an important place to religious and moral doctrines in public political discourse. 



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human life begins to one side (in other words, by being “neutral with respect to them”) and leaving it to the free choice of the women directly concerned.10 For liberals, including Rawls, since the moral status of the early fetus is not clear, and thus any claim about that status is hard to justify using arguments accessible to all, and thus controversial, the remaining concept that both sides can talk meaningfully about is the political one of the rights and equality of women. However, Sandel takes seriously particular religious and moral views on abortion, saying: If the Catholic Church is right about the moral status of the fetus, if abortion is morally tantamount to murder, then it is not clear why the political values of toleration and women’s equality, important though they are, should prevail.11

In Sandel’s view, if the Catholic doctrine is true, Rawls would have difficulty in explaining why political values should prevail.12 In other words, Sandel thinks that it is not possible to put aside the moral-theological question of when human life begins, though this does not automatically mean that abortion is wrong. It is simply to show that the case for abortion rights cannot be neutral with respect to that moral and religious controversy. It must engage rather than avoid the comprehensive moral and religious doctrines at stake.13

In the abortion debate, Sandel attempts to show that the liberal priority of the right over the good cannot be sustained. With respect to moral and religious convictions in public political discourse, Sandel advocates a deliberative mode “by engaging, or attending to, them— sometimes by challenging and contesting them, sometimes by listening and learning from them—especially when those convictions bear on important political questions.”14 By deliberation and engagement, this mode would offer “a more spacious public reason” than the liberal conception allows. To encourage the engagement and public expression of our moral and religious views in debating political questions is a better way, in his view, to respect the distinctive goods deriving from religious and moral diversity in a democratic pluralist society. “It is also a more suitable ideal for a pluralistic society.”15 By contrast, the liberal “bracketing” approach will erode the health and vitality of society. The deliberative mode of respect proposed by Sandel, as Brian Stiltner points out, is a recommendation “that liberalism recover a substantial role for moral

10 11 12 13 14 15

Ibid., 197–8. Ibid., 198. Ibid., 198 n. Ibid., 198. Ibid., 217. Ibid., 218.

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and religious argument in political deliberation.”16 The political and legal issues in question should be open to religious arguments, or to the conceptions of “good” of religious convictions and communities. “They should not remove from consideration arguments that can promote justice and contribute to the common good simply because such arguments are religious.”17 In short, in contrast to Rawls and Audi’s restraints on, or marginalization of, religious doctrine in democratic political life, Sandel emphasizes the importance of religious and moral argument in political deliberation, since this sort of engagement will advance deliberative respect in a pluralist society. Another criticism of the liberal restraint raised by David Reidy—I would call it “incompleteness criticism”—does not appeal to the diverse moral and religious values in public political debate as Sandel does. Reidy regards “commitment to the autonomy and completeness of liberal public reason” as the core of Rawls’s (wide) ideal of public reason and claims that “liberal public reason is neither autonomous nor complete to the degree Rawls suggests.”18 In other words, in Reidy’s view, Rawls’s revised view of public reason is still not wide enough. Reidy believes that Rawls’s wide view of public reason still requires the public discourse of political questions to be “justified within public reason alone” even if religious or secular doctrines may be employed in due course. For Reidy, this commitment is implausible. He suggests that many fundamental political issues would not be resolved in a reasoned way only by public reason without “a resolution-determinative appeal to non-public reasons.”19 There are circumstances that citizens or officials are sincerely motivated by and thus rely on non-public reasons in political advocacy in the public forum, even though they believe the advocacy is not justified by public reason or within public reason alone.20 When this occurs, it proves that “liberal public reason is to that extent heteronomous and incomplete.”21 For example, in political debate on the abortion issue, public reason will be inconclusive. “While he (Rawls) is certainly correct that liberal political values bear on abortion issues, some of these cannot be decided without taking a stand on the moral status of the fetus.”22 That is to say, the question of the moral status of the fetus cannot be avoided in the debate: “To resolve such fundamental political issues in a reasoned way, then, citizens and officials must turn to non-

16

Brian Stiltner, Religion and the Common Good: Catholic Contributions to Building Community in a Liberal Society (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), 73. 17 Ibid., 75–6. 18 David A. Reidy, “Rawls’ Wide View of Public Reason: Not Wide Enough,” Res Publica ���������������� 6 (2000),������� 49���� –��� 72�. 19 Ibid.������ , 52. 20 Ibid��������������� .�������������� , ������������ 52, 55, 71. 21 Ibid., 68. 22 Ibid.������ , 70.



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public reasons.”23 In this case, Rawls’s principle is that citizens and officials should resolve the question within public reason, and on the basis of the political value of the choice of women without necessarily referring to the moral status of the fetus. But for Reidy, “to proceed as Rawls suggests is just indirectly, covertly and without public justification to adopt a particular resolution of this question.”24 Reidy’s main point here is that to achieve a reasoned and determined resolution of many fundamental political issues, liberal public reason will be incomplete and too restrictive for many citizens and officials, since they must turn to non-public reasons derived from comprehensive doctrines, including religious ones.25 For this reason, Reidy proposes that Rawls’s wide view of the ideal of public reason “be widened still further,” yet without discarding Rawls’s ideals of political autonomy and liberal legitimacy. Even though Reidy’s arguments are criticized by Andrew Williams,26 he still reminds us of the potential insufficiency of liberal public reason alone in settling some political issues. Chaplin holds similar ideas to Reidy’s, regarding Rawls’s failure to “open up adequate space for the sincere articulation of religiously-based political arguments by those whose beliefs rule out any ‘freestanding’ domains of thought.”27 For Reidy and Chaplin, it does become a question in liberal public reason as to how to embrace religious political argument without being supported by freestanding political ideas or public reasons. Both of them advocate one kind of political justification with appeal to comprehensive religious and nonreligious doctrines under certain circumstances. Greenawalt also stresses the relevance of religious convictions to political choice or religious sources as guidance for ethical and political decisions. A crucial point for him is stated as follows: “Religious convictions of the sort familiar in this society [the United States] bear pervasively on people’s ethical choices, including choices about laws and government policies.”28 In this sense, to some extent he supports the entry of religious convictions into public political discussion and maintains the significance of religious convictions in political choices. “A person’s reliance on religious grounds should be regarded as appropriate if everyone must use nonpublic reasons of some sort or another.”29 23

Ibid.������ , 69. Ibid., 70. 25 Ibid.������ , 71. 26 Andrew Williams thinks that Reidy has not established the incompleteness of liberal public reason since his recommendation cannot “guarantee a non-arbitrary resolution of every political issue” and reliance upon comprehensive doctrines may “only defer, rather than eliminate, the need to make rationally underdetermined political choices” (Andrew Williams, “The Alleged Incompleteness of Public Reason”), 211. 27 Chaplin, “Beyond Liberal Restraint: Defending Religiously-Based�������������� Arguments ������������� in Law and Public Policy,”������� 641–2. ������ 28 Kent Greenawalt, Religious Convictions and Political Choice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 30. 29 Ibid., 144. 24

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Greenawalt argues that not all controversial political issues will be resolved by public reasons and that religious values do offer grounds for resolving such issues. As Solum understands it, “it is fair to allow reliance on religious reasons to resolve those questions of political morality that must be resolved by some form of nonpublic reasons.”30 With regard to some political issues, such as debates on abortion, environmental protection, and animal rights, religious convictions may be crucial to some people. The solution of these issues does need moral premises (which may be religiously based for some people)—“deep personal convictions,” even though these convictions are disputed among citizens. As I noted in Chapter 2, Greenawalt proposes a self-restraint principle for legislators and citizens, especially to avoid legislators’ explicit reliance on controversial religious or other comprehensive views. In addition, he limits “religious discourse” to “a fairly narrow use of religiously grounded arguments to sustain legislative arguments.”31 However, he does not rule out the possible contribution of these comprehensive views to the resolution of certain political issues. “I now believe that comprehensive view and nonaccessible grounds can appropriately figure in resolution of the broad range of political issues that ordinary citizens face.”32 Just as Greenawalt emphasizes religious guidance for ethical and political decisions, Sandel expresses the concern that setting aside moral arguments (whether religious or nonreligious) in political discourse will lead to the loss of moral guidance in making political and legal decisions. Instead, the engagement of moral arguments will bring a vital democratic politics with deliberative respect for citizens. Without intending to give up the principles of political autonomy and liberal legitimacy, Reidy points to the incompleteness of liberal public reason in resolving many fundamental political issues where citizens and officials need to appeal to non-public reasons. It is worth noting that both Sandel and Reidy doubt the adequacy of public reason itself and point out that some political issues would be difficult to resolve within public reason alone, if moral arguments are excluded from the debate. The resolution of fundamental political questions in a reasoned way demands a “more spacious public reason” (Sandel’s term) either by allowing more positive participation in public political discourse by moral arguments or by relying more on nonpublic reasons. At this stage, these critics of liberal restraints on religion in democratic political culture seem to concentrate on the need for moral arguments in political discourse, without addressing religion substantially. Their criticism does not depend explicitly and directly on the significance of religious values themselves or the actions of religious people. I turn to this aspect of the issue next.

30 ��������������������������������� Solum, “Faith and Justice,” 1100. 31 32

Greenawalt, Private Consciences and Public Reasons, 158. Ibid., 160.



3.2

Criticisms of Liberal Restraint

45

Religious Perspectives

Rawls’s and Audi’s restraints on religion in public political culture are also challenged from religious perspectives by some scholars such as Michael Perry, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Timothy Jackson, who advocate a greater role for religious argument in public discourse. I will first discuss how religious morality can contribute to liberal democracy, in Perry and Jackson’s positions, and then turn to Wolterstorff’s concern with the ethics of citizens, especially of religious people. Perry elaborates his position on religion in politics in the context of democratic societies as religiously and morally pluralistic. Against such pluralism, he proposes one dialogue model, namely, “ecumenical political dialogue.” The political goal of dialogue is not always reaching agreement, for we do not need to overcome the differences among us all the time. “Ecumenical political dialogue” aims to achieve a common political ground that “transcends ‘local’ or ‘sectarian’ differences.”33 In acknowledging the value of religious and moral pluralism, this political dialogue is intended to be pluralist and inclusive: “an ideal of religious (and nonreligious) participation in political dialogue—specifically, in the political dialogue of a religiously and morally pluralistic society.”34 This inclusivist ideal in ecumenical political dialogue is a denial of the neutralist or exclusivist ideal of political choice that may be advocated by liberals. As I understand it, Perry’s “inclusivist” position on religiously based moral arguments in public political debate is based on his two kinds of religious argument about the morality of human conduct, and on his comparison between religious morality and secular moral argument. First, he makes two statements to compare religious morality with secular moral argument: religious-based moral discourse is neither necessarily more sectarian or divisive nor necessarily less deliberative than secular moral arguments.35 Are religious arguments really more exclusive or divisive than the secular ones? It will be unreasonable to say so. As Chaplin points out, “secular reasons can be just as exclusive as religious ones.”36 Undoubtedly some religious political advocacy may be divisive, but “much religiously motivated political action is loving, gracious, and humble.”37 Hence, for Michael McConnell, both empirical and normative grounds are lacking for taking the greater divisiveness and absolutism of religious political argument to argue for the exclusion of 33 See Michael Perry, Love and Power: the Role of Religion and Morality in American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 47. 34 Ibid., 141. 35 See Michael Perry, “Liberal Democracy and Religious Morality,” Depaul Law Review ���������������� 48 (1998), 1���� ����� –��� 50�. 36 Chaplin, “Beyond Liberal Restraint,”������ 632. ����� 37 Michael W. McConnell, “Five Reasons to Reject the Claim that Religious Argument Should be Excluded from Democratic Deliberation,” Utah Law Review (1999), 639–57.

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religious reasons from democratic politics in favor of justification by secular rationale instead. McConnell writes of the danger of this exclusion: To attempt to keep people of religious convictions out of politics, or to force them to change their mode of argument as the price of admission to the public square, will not decrease divisiveness and promote toleration. It will deepen the anger and hostility that these citizens feel toward the hegemonic and exclusionary practices of the secular power structure.38

If religiously based arguments in political advocacy are not necessarily more sectarian or divisive than secular ones, religious arguments about the morality of human conduct may be presented, no less than secular arguments, in public political debate by citizens and even legislators and other public officials.39 “We should not merely welcome but encourage the presentation of such arguments in public political debate—so that we can test them there.”40 One basic point for Perry is that religiously based moral arguments will inevitably play a role, so it is better that they do so openly, so that they can be tested in the political process. But he goes further to give two basic kinds of religious arguments about the morality of human conduct: the sacredness of human beings, or human worth, and the requirements of human well-being, or the truly good, for human beings. However, these arguments are to be applied differently. In Perry’s view, “there is no intelligible (much less persuasive) secular vision of the conviction that every human being is sacred; the only intelligible versions are religious.”41 Therefore, he argues, in making a political choice about the morality of human conduct, citizens and legislators and other public officials may rely on a religious argument about the sacredness of all human beings, even if that is not supported by persuasive secular argument. But they should not rely on a religious argument about the requirements of human well-being unless a persuasive secular argument reaches the same conclusion as the religious arguments.42 38

Ibid., 650. See Perry, Religion in Politics, 44. 40 Ibid., 47. 41 Michael Perry, The Idea of Human Rights: Four Inquiries (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 11. 42 See Perry, Religion in Politics, 66–82. It should be noted that “sacredness,” which simply means “holy,” is by definition a specifically religious concept, so Perry’s finding that secular arguments for it are unpersuasive is, logically speaking, predetermined. Naturally, nonreligious people would probably prefer to use a more neutral term, such as “human worth,” and would be likely to find religious arguments for it equally unpersuasive. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) does not use the word “sacred” (and instead uses formulae such as “the inherent dignity … of all members of the human family” and “the dignity and worth of the human person”), but Perry’s exposition of it (Perry, Religion in Politics, 66, 136 n. 11) conflates these terms with “sacredness” and “human worth,” and uses them interchangeably, which helps account for his view. 39



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In Perry’s view, “no religious argument about the requirements of human well-being should be deemed sufficiently strong to ground a political choice,”43 and this calls for a persuasive secular argument. Therefore, what Perry defends is the need to make room for some kinds of religious-based arguments and some kinds of religious participation in political deliberation and political choices—but not all kinds of reliance or all kinds of religious beliefs about human morality. He attempts not to discriminate against religiously based arguments in the political process but to encourage the presentation of religious arguments in public political debate and test them there, even though in some cases it requires an independent secular argument in addition to religious arguments in making a political choice. Regarding the abortion issue, Perry sees that the “pro-life”/“pro-choice” controversy as concerned with “two relevant, fundamental ‘public’ values: the great worth of human life and the full and therefore equal humanity of women.”44 The pro-life side of the abortion debate regarding the sacredness of human beings is influenced significantly by religious voices, but this voice does not “press, in public political debate, a sectarian religious argument.”45 However, in the case of opposition to abortion by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the United States, the bishops’ argument does not and need not rely on a religious argument about the requirements of human well-being. Government would therefore not need to rely on such arguments, in Perry’s view, if it were to adopt a pro-life position as law.46 One main reason to take ecumenical political dialogue seriously, or to encourage the presence of religiously based arguments in the political process, in Perry’s view, is the deliberative aspect of dialogue grounded in agape, or love of neighbor. For him, this ideal is fundamental for religious communities as well as many nonreligious persons. As a constitutive ideal, love of neighbor teaches “openness to Other—to the Stranger, the outsider—in deliberative dialogue” through listening to and responding to the Other.47 He regards the purpose of ecumenical political dialogue as being to establish the terms of an ideal of political community that combines love and power (or more specifically, political love and political power), “in which love both inspires and inhibits the exercise of political power, in which the exercise of political power, and the decision not to exercise it, are, at their best, acts of love.”48 In such a polity, he argues, religious convictions would lead us to connect love with power in political life. Timothy Jackson, in his “civic agapism,” which he sees as a version of morally perfectionist liberalism, goes further in arguing for the indispensable place of love 43 44 45 46 47 48

Ibid., 73. Ibid., 60. Ibid., 72. Ibid., 70–72. Perry, Love and Power,����� 50. ���� Ibid., 145.

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in a liberal society. Assuming that “the core of the person is not a fixed ability for choice but the passive potential for love,”49 this version of liberalism “puts some form of benevolence first and appeals to empathy,” in distinction to Rawls’ appeal to overlapping consensus.50 According to Jackson’s interpretation, agape consists of three elements: unconditional commitment to the good of others, equal regard for the worth of others and for oneself, and service, even to self-sacrifice for the upholding of others.51 From a Christian perspective, charity comes first as a reason for action, and the potential for charity grounds human dignity.52 First of all, Jackson affirms the diversity of human goods and human faculties—what he calls “conscientious liberalism:” they are “happily multiple” so “diversity and multiplicity are celebrated, not simply tolerated.”53 Diversity, however, needs unity in a good society. Jackson suggests that through love we can achieve this unity in diversity. In care for and service to others, one can be untied with others so that they could live in a community in solidarity despite their divergence in moral or religious views. Love nurtures and preserves unity. This is rooted in the nature of agape as a metavalue along with the enjoyment of other goods, which suggests “a unifying perspective that permits an intelligible balance of, and/or choice between, values.”54 Jackson’s ideal of a good society is also liberal, since it respects freedom of conscience as an intrinsic good, but more importantly, it puts charity first among social virtues and encourages citizens to exercise sympathy in harmony with fellow citizens. In contrast to Rawls’s pursuit of political justice—instead of ideals of human good such as love and benevolence—in modern pluralistic societies, Jackson argues that personal care or “charity” is more fundamental than “autonomy” and “procedural justice.” We should assert human dependency as well as freedom, and nurture love as well as fairness. In maintaining unity in diversity, love cultivates decency along with tolerance.55 Hence charity should have priority, rather than personal choice and freedom, in a liberal society. Freedom has its limits and should be transcended. In his account of “love transforming justice,” Jackson argues that agape never entails less than justice requires. Agape offers people their due, on the one hand, 49

Timothy P. Jackson, “Love in a Liberal Society: A Response to Paul J. Weithman,” Journal of Religious Ethics 22����������������� /���������������� 1 (1994), 29–38. 50 Timothy P. Jackson, “The Return of the Prodigal? Liberal Theory and Religious Pluralism,” in Weithman�������� (������ ed.��� )��, Religion and Contemporary Liberalism, ��������� 182������ –����� 217��. 51 See Timothy P. Jackson, “Liberalism and Agape: The Priority of Charity to Democracy and Philosophy,” Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 1993 (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1993), 4����� 7���� –��� 71�. 52 “The most distinctive biblical contribution to social ethics is that we owe one another love. Being in the debt of love is the source of human dignity” (ibid., 70). 53 Jackson, “The Return of the Prodigal?”������ 193. ����� 54 Jackson, “Liberalism and Agape,” 58. 55 Ibid, 48–9.



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and displays “the leavening priority of the good to the right” occasionally, on the other. Moreover, the political goal of “civic agapism” is to encourage citizens to participate, to love, to care for others, to be “possessed of civic virtue, rather than the autonomous atom, moved by self-interest or even public peace.” This transformation would also help bring individuals into fuller personhood by empowering others to realize their potential to care.56 Jackson’s “civic agapism” claims that the liberal pursuit of consensus or public reason in public life should not sacrifice other moral commitments such as love and personal care. To preclude some important religious arguments from political discourse will, in his view, make the discourse more likely to be filled with selfishness. Jackson criticizes two types of liberalism: the politics of subjectivity (“liberalism as morally empty”), and the politics of objectivity (“liberalism as morally basic”). The former claims no general theoretical truths, at least not in ethics and politics, so it lacks resources “to distinguish the means to virtue (a political community) from virtue itself (love and justice).”57 In the general appraisal of value, in its pursuit of justice and human rights, “liberalism as morally basic” “… surrenders its distinctive identity for the sake of universal truth” and sacrifices “moral affections like gratitude and devotion, pity and forgiveness.”58 It would result in the loss both of the sense of “embodied selfhood” and of the motivation of “individual desires and socially generated commitments.” Since it does not take into account some important aspects of human relationships, such friendship and erotic relations, this ethic of pure appraisal or pure objectivity is not sustainable and less than human.59 In Jackson’s view, these two liberal positions may lack adequate resources to support themselves. They give weight to citizens’ virtues such as autonomy and respect for others, but have difficulties in explaining the values of such motives as self-sacrifice and benevolence, and of special relationships.60 For Jackson, the primary question is “how we generate caring people capable of free agency, respectful of rights and duties, to begin with.”61 That is why charity/benevolence should come first before justice. The motives from which people acquire and sustain goals is more essential, in his view, than the goals themselves. Jackson’s version of Christian liberalism as morally perfectionist, as a politics of care, a kind of synthesis of subjectivity and objectivity that is based on charity rather than autonomy, may accommodate these moral motives in a liberal society. He concludes that agape, the core of Christian morality, has a preeminent place 56

Ibid, 54, 59. Jackson, “The Return of the Prodigal?” 186. 58 Ibid., 187–8. 59 Ibid, 188. 60 These points are based on Weithman’s analysis. See Paul Weithman, “Introduction: Religion and the Liberalism of Reasoned Respect,” in Weithman�������� (������ ed.��� )��, Religion and Contemporary Liberalism, 1–37. 61 Jackson, “The Return of the Prodigal?”����� 188. ���� 57

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in a liberal society, a place prior to both philosophy (the quest for theoretical truth) and pure democracy (the denial of moral truth altogether in favor of public convention).62 Hence it is imperative “to put a distinctively liberal charity first in our public deliberations.”63 Jackson’s interpretations of love and justice match the understandings of other Christian scholars such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich. Both of the latter hold the priority of love to justice. Niebuhr regards love as the norm of justice, being involved in “all approximations of love.” “In so far as justice admits the claims of the self, it is something less than love. Yet it cannot exist without love and remain justice. For without the ‘grace’ of love, justice always degenerates into something less than love.”64 Tillich also stresses the unity of justice and love in order to “avoid the injustice of eternal destruction:” “justice is just because of the love which is implicit in it.”65 What is notable about Jackson’s argument is that he asserts the insufficiency of moral motives alone to generate and sustain justice in the kind of modern pluralistic societies advocated by political liberals, and therefore insists on the priority of liberal charity over autonomy and justice in a liberal society. He does not disregard the values of freedom and justice; rather, he holds that there should be something beyond them: agape—love, care and service for the good and worth of others—plays this role. Justice and freedom are thus transcended by love. Therefore, he argues, public political discourse should contain such motives as benevolence and personal care, as offered by “civic agapism,” more than the respect for freedom and equality of others that is the cornerstone of other types of liberalism. In comparison with Rawls’s view of love as a comprehensive conception of the good in the background culture, and (political) justice as a freestanding conception, Jackson seems to view love and justice as two different sets of civic virtues, and argues that justice and public political deliberation require love as a moral motive. Obviously, writing within the Christian tradition, he understands love to be supernatural, and he relies heavily on biblical sources in his understanding of the meaning of agape. A question arises about the public acceptance of such a conception: in a liberal society that respects freedom of conscience and in which people have different religious or nonreligious beliefs— and hence all kinds of understanding of love—how is it possible for all of them, especially people outside Christian communities, to endorse the sense of that term derived from—and the preeminent place it enjoys in—Christian teachings,

62

See Jackson, “Liberalism and Agape,” 47. Ibid., 72. 64 Reinhold Niebuhr, Love and Justice: Selections from the Shorter Writings of Reinhold Niebuhr (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 28. 65 Paul Tillich, Love, Power and Justice (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), 14–15. 63



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and to follow its requirements in society, on the assumption that we regard that as desirable? It appears to me that both Perry and Jackson’s main concern with religion in liberal politics is in the contribution of religious morality, particularly the significance of love and its connection to public political culture. Next, I will move to another aspect of the religious criticism of liberal restraint: Wolterstorff’s view on the ethics of citizens (and religious people in particular) engaging in political discussions and decisions. In his dialogue with Audi in Religion in the Public Square, Wolterstorff opposes the liberal position that advises “religious-reason restraint” based on the “independent-source” principle—“the thesis that the role of citizen in a liberal democracy includes a restraint on the use of reasons derived from one’s religion, for one’s decisions and discussions on political issues, and a requirement that citizens instead use an independent source.”66 The principles, with some sources independent of any and all religious doctrines, are to serve as the basis of political debate and decisions. In addition, liberals assume that such restraints on religious reasons in the political arena, in respecting citizens as free and equal, do not violate the religious convictions of religious people. Wolterstorff ’s criticism of political liberals first points to the fact that reasonable and rational citizens may disagree about principles of justice (which function as the basis of discussions and decisions on political matters in Rawls) as well as about comprehensive doctrines.67 He also refers to Greenawalt’s argument to emphasize that some political issues would not be resolved within a freestanding conception.68 Importantly, Wolterstorff argues that the ideal of liberal democracy is irrelevant to the principles for resolving some contested political issues and “does not enable to us to choose principles and various competitors.”69 In the case of the abortion debate, Rawls finally leaves it to the choice of women. Wolterstorff is not satisfied with this strategy. He claims that the crucial question in debating over abortion is whether the fetus is a person and thus the ideal of liberal democracy does not help settle this question. “To this question, the Ideal of liberal democracy has nothing at all to contribute.”70 Besides these criticisms of liberal restraint on religion in political debate, in his dissatisfaction with the liberal position, Wolterstorff shows his concern with religious people in the case. On the one hand, he criticizes what he sees as the unfairness of the liberal position on religion, in that in practice secular views “go undetected” while religious reasons are in question or are marginalized, and in that 66

Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The Role of Religion in Decision and Discussion of Political Issues,” in Audi and Wolterstorff, 81. 67 Ibid., 99. 68 Ibid., 102–103. 69 Ibid., 104. 70 Ibid., 104.

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liberal restraint on religious reasons infringes on the free exercise of religion.71 Wolterstorff sees political actions on the basis of religious convictions as one form of the free exercise of religion. He explains in details as follows: It belongs to the religious convictions of a good many religious people in our society [the United States] that they ought to base their decisions concerning fundamental issues of justice on their religious convictions … It is their conviction that they ought to strive for wholeness, integrity, integration, in their lives: that they ought to allow the Word of God, the teachings of the Torah, the command and example of Jesus, or whatever, to shape their existence as a whole, including, then, their social and political existence. Their religion is not, for them, about something other than their social and political existence; it is also about their social and political existence. Accordingly, to require of them that they not base their decisions and discussions concerning political issues on their religion is to infringe, inequitably, on the free exercise of their religion.72

To pursue a religiously integrated existence, including social and political existence, Wolterstorff argues, it is obligatory for religious people to rely on religious convictions in dealing with political issues. Here, Wolterstorff assumes that religious people should be consistent both in private and in social and political life. It would not be fair to ask them to divide their life into a religious component and a non-religious component. He also claims it is inappropriate to impose on them the need to follow the independent principle or even to combine public or secular reasons with their religious conviction, as the liberal position requires. This understanding of religious people in political life in terms of religious convictions distinguishes itself from the liberal position on the distinction between a citizen’s personal and political character. From the liberal point of view, as we have seen above, religious people may embrace their religious doctrines freely, but according to the principle of political legitimacy, they should refrain from citing religious reasons in public debate on political issues and conform to the independent-source principles. For Wolterstorff, it is part of the free exercise of religion to act politically on the basis of one’s religious convictions, which are fundamental to one’s life. This leads to his basic argument that there should be no restraint on religious reasons in public debate: “I see no reason to suppose that the ethic of the citizen in a liberal democracy includes a restraint on the use of religious reason in deciding and discussing political issues. Let citizens use whatever reasons they find appropriate—including, then, religious reasons.”73 Yet, he adds three sorts of general requirements to the ethic of citizens’ political actions in a liberal democracy: to conduct discussions with civility, in accordance with the laws

71

Ibid., 105, 115. Ibid., 105. 73 Ibid., 111–12. 72



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of the land, and with the overall goal of political justice rather than one’s own interests.74 Thus, Wolterstorff proposes the absence of restraint on the use of religious reasons, and the abandonment of the independent-source principles as the basis of political debate; this position—Wolterstorff calls it “consocial position”—is taken as an alternative to the liberal position.75 A remarkable feature of this position is the idea that one must show respect for “certain peculiarities of one’s fellow citizens” in political discourse. This position is contrasted with the liberal position that only requires “respect for the freedom and equality of citizens” without providing adequate space for the full expression of their religious convictions in public discourse.76 From Wolterstorff’s perspective, the liberal position is not enough: “we need a politics that not only honors us in our similarity as free and equal, but in our particularities.”77 That is what he advocates—“a politics of multiple communities” instead of the liberal ideal of politics of a community with a shared rather than a comprehensive perspective.78 Since in his view it is not fair to ask everyone (or at least, religious people) to use the independent-source principle in debating and deciding political issues, Wolterstorff’s overall attempt is to demonstrate the inadequacy of that principle and to insist on respect for citizens’ particularities, especially the freedom to embrace their various religious convictions in political life. From his point of view, the advocacy of “a politics of multiple communities” is fully compatible with the idea of liberal democracy.79 Wolterstorff argues that the development of democratic culture cannot be separated from the presence of religious arguments in public political forum. He mentions two additional relevant points here: one is the religious roots of the “free and equal” doctrine that is the core principle of liberal democracy (a debatable interpretation, since an equally plausible nonreligious ancestry of these ideas can be traced back through the Enlightenment to Ancient Greece), and the other is that “many of the social movements in the modern world that have moved societies in the direction of liberal democracy have been deeply religious in their orientation.”80

74 Ibid., 112–13. Except for the goal of debates and discussions, which is compatible with the liberal position, Wolterstorff’s restraint on the ethics of citizens, which aims to ensure that their actions take place within the context of basic democratic institutions, should be understood as different from the restraint on religious reasons advocated by liberals. Above all, he intends to allow religious reasons to function more freely in public debate. 75 Ibid.,��������� 114–15. �������� 76 Ibid., 113. 77 Ibid., 111. 78 See ibid., p. �������� 109. ����� 79 Ibid., 81, 113. 80 Ibid., 80.

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Although Wolterstorff acknowledges that his position is in agreement with the liberal position on political justice as the goal of political discussions and actions, his understanding of the ethics of citizenship is different from Rawls’s. For Rawls, to respect a fellow citizen as free and equal is to impose on ourselves restraint on the use of religious reasons in political debate, indeed all reasons that one could not reasonably expect one’s fellow citizens to be able to share in a common conceptual framework. As Wolterstorff notes, this principle presupposes a communal recognition that “the citizens of liberal democracies already recognize that they ought to treat each other as free and equal.”81 Wolterstorff does not underestimate this sort of respect for freedom and equality of fellow citizens; instead, he thinks that is not in itself adequate: to build up a politics of multiple communities, we need more respect for citizens’ particularities, especially the free use of religious reasons in public discourse so as to assure a religiously integrated existence of religious people. He recognizes that the ethical requirements of citizens in political debates and discussions, including the use of religious reasons, should take political justice as the goal. In this sense, citizens’ free use of religious reasons would not bring about any unfairness to their fellow citizens. But, how does the use of religious reasons in public discourse protect the integrity of religious people in social and political existence, on the one hand, and serve the goal of political justice, on the other, especially in public officials who are themselves religious believers and at the same time rely on their religious convictions in political debates and decisions? It seems that Wolterstorff needs more explanations at this point. The various positions of the scholars discussed above in their critique of liberal restraint on the role of religion in public political culture, and their questioning of the adequacy of its reliance on public reason alone, may be summarized as follows: Sandel advocates deliberative respect for moral and religious pluralism, and thus their engagement and moral guidance in public political debate; Reidy claims liberal public reason is incomplete, and appeals to nonpublic reasons in political advocacy without the support of freestanding political conceptions; Perry affirms the importance of religiously based moral arguments in the political process; Jackson emphasizes motives such as benevolence and personal care in public political discourse; and Wolterstorff asserts the relevance of religious and moral positions for making political choices, views independent political principles as inadequate, and supports a religiously integrated existence and the right of religious people to express and defend their political actions in explicitly religious terms. These criticisms argue the limitations of political liberals’ account of religious values in liberal politics when the latter stress moral and religious pluralism in a democratic society and seek to curb the use of religious reasons in public political debate. The basis for the criticisms by Sandel, Perry and Wolterstorff is that religious commitments are irreplaceable in a liberal demo­cracy. It appears that they 81

Ibid, 110.



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do not disregard fundamental liberal principles such as value pluralism and the free-and-equal doctrine. Rather, they claim that, in regard to some controversial political issues, these values are incomplete or inadequate without the involvement of certain religious arguments. In short, the particular contributions of religion to liberal politics should not be put aside or marginalized. In my view, their aim is to integrate liberalism with religion and to argue for the interdependence of religion and lib­eralism. These views may encounter objections from the liberals’ perspectives. Given the respect for diversity of conceptions of the human good, and equality in deliberating political choices, two questions will arise. First, even if citizens (including religious believers) present religious ideas in the public deliberation of political issues, thereby illuminating their understanding of the moral dimension of these issues, these diverse religious arguments themselves may come into conflict, and it would be unfair to base a decision on any particular belief. Furthermore, it would not be reasonable for public officials to directly cite and rely on any personal religious and moral convictions in political decision-making, in that these convictions may be opposed to others’ beliefs. Therefore, it seems necessary for public officials to express these values in other terms—terms in which every participant can potentially share—in political decision-making and justification. The second question is how public deliberation contributes to the political process. The wide sense of public deliberation, allowing and encouraging participation by all citizens and the expression of all (reasonable) views, religious or nonreligious, will certainly enrich democratic political life. Yet it remains a question how these deliberations should be connected to the decisions that will finally emerge.

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Chapter 4

Religion in Modern Democratic Pluralistic Society 4.1

Religious Freedom and Religious Expression in Public Life

From the above description, one crucial problem of the debate on the role of religion in modern democratic pluralistic society is the relation between religious freedom and religious expression or participation in public life. The question is: should the guarantee of the free exercise of religion in a liberal democracy contain its free public expression? One of the central values of liberal democracy is the freedom of religious belief and practice. The protection of religious freedom has been a widely acknowledged ideal in modern democratic societies, but people have different understandings of its meaning. David Hollenbach is an important representative of those who regard religious public expression and influence as one aspect of religious freedom. Derived from the traditions of the Second Vatican Council and the American theologian John Murray, Hollenbach’s understanding of religious freedom consists of two levels: one is a negative immunity—“a freedom from interference with one’s religious convictions by the state or by other groups in society” and the other is a positive empowerment to “express one’s religious convictions in public and to seek to influence the public life of society in accord with these convictions.” The negative meaning, the state’s non-interference with the religious, has been accepted generally and developed into the principle of the separation of church and state. It has become common sense that to preserve religious freedom government should not interfere with the affairs of religion. On the other hand, the positive aspect of religious freedom, namely religious participation in public (including political) life, has been problematic.



See Audi, “Liberal Democracy and the Place of Religion in Politics,” in Audi and Wolterstorff, 167.  David Hollenbach , “Public Reason /Private Religion? A Response to Paul J. Weithman,” Journal of Religious Ethics,����������������������������������������������������� 22/ 1 (1994), 39������������������������������������ �������������������������������������� –46. See his origin statement about his idea of religious liberty in David Hollenbach, “Freedom and Truth: Religious Liberty as Immunity and Empowerment.”

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I would first present James Reichley’s typology of the role of churches in politics in the United States under the principle of church–state separation: Separation between church and state



Role of churches in politics

Separationists Strict Small Social activists Strict Large Accommodationists Moderate Moderate Interventionists Moderate Large Different groups have different attitudes to the degree of separation, as well as to the church’s involvement in politics. At least two groups, social activists and interventionists, advocate the role of churches in politics even though they hold different opinions on church–state separation. From this perspective, the separation does not necessarily imply the exclusion of religion from politics. McConnell asserts that, in the United States, “The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment was not designated to make religion irrelevant to politics (an impossible task), but to protect the right of the people to make religious decisions and to form religious associations without government interference or favoritism.” Perry too points out that the nonestablishment norm regarding church and state protects freedom of religion and religion itself, including its public dimensions: “It is first and foremost a matter of private right. Church–state separation is the great protector of true faith, not its inhibitor.” The relevance of religion to the public sphere implies that religious expression concerning political issues would not violate the separation doctrine; rather, it presents one kind of religious exercise in the public arena. Wolterstorff even maintains that to prohibit political actions on the basis of religious convictions means infringing the free exercise of religion. The liberal positions on religion in public political culture in democratic societies also show their consideration and treatment of the issue of religious freedom. It is well known that liberals give priority to the values of individual free choice. Religious freedom in a liberal democracy is their main concern. However, when they affirm the right to free exercise of religious belief, they claim that 

James Reichley, Religion in American Public Life (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1985), 3.  McConnell, “Five Reasons to Reject the Claim that Religious Argument Should be Excluded from Democratic Deliberation,”������������������������������������ 643. ����������������������������������� ������������������������������ The First Amendment of the US Constitution ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� begins����������������������������������������������������������������������� : ��������������������������������������������������������������������� “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ….”  ������� Perry, Religion in Politics, 18. The authors of the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights were of course also concerned to prevent the temporal power of established churches.



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the exercise should proceed within certain limits in liberal democratic politics. This can be found in Rawls, Audi and Rorty. Rawls allows the free acceptance and expression of religious doctrine by citizens in background culture through the “principle of rights,” but through the “principle of independence” and the “principle of introduction” he limits religion’s role in the construction of political conceptions of justice, and imposes restraints on the use of religious doctrine in public political discourse on fundamental political questions. Audi strengthens this point in his own way. At the first stage, in the libertarian principle on church–state institutional doctrine, he supports the state’s permission of free exercise of any religion in a free and democratic society, including freedom of religious belief, freedom of worship, and freedom to engage in the rites and rituals of one’s religion, assuming this can be done without violating the basic moral rights of others. It follows that religion should be subject to certain restraints in the public domain. He states more explicitly that protection of religious freedom requires the restriction of religious reasons in public political advocacy according to the principles of secular rationale and secular motivation. Furthermore, religious argument in public political debate should not undermine the principles of church–state separation. One consideration here is respect for nonreligious persons in the course of supporting restrictive law and public policies. It is clear that to guarantee religious liberty Rawls, Audi and Rorty intend to show adequate respect for nonreligious people and community, especially in public political discourse. Rorty notices the conflict and conversation difficulties between the religious and the nonreligious in political debate, and thus he suggests the privatization of religion. Rawls and Audi, by contrast, do not go so far. In Audi, the principle of secular motivation is designed to avoid the alienation of the nonreligious in political debate when religious arguments are used. Rawls’s ideal of public reason is to enable one’s fellow citizens (including nonreligious people) to endorse the principles advocated by certain citizens or public officials in political debates. Both of them restrict and yet do not eliminate the use of religious reasons in public political debate. This sort of understanding of religious freedom by stressing the state’s noninterference with religious exercise and constraining the use of religious reasons in public political life of a democratic society is criticized by Sandel: The respect the liberal invokes is not, strictly speaking, respect for religion, but respect for the self whose religion it is, or respect for the dignity that consists in the capacity to choose one’s religion freely … On the liberal view, religious beliefs are worthy of

 See Audi, “Liberal Democracy and the Place of Religion in Politics,” in Audi and Wolterstorff, 4–5.  The strict separationists also regard religion as a private affair by prohibiting its influence in civic or public matters.

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Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China respect, not in virtue of their content but instead in vir���������������������������� t��������������������������� ue of being the product of free and voluntary choice.

In Sandel’s view, liberals defend religious liberty based on the principle of “the right before the good.” Sandel points out that they regard religious belief as one kind of individual free choice among others, which ought to be protected in a liberal society. Liberals do not take much account of the content of religious beliefs when they conceive religious liberty. What Sandel advocates is that the right to religious freedom lies in the very moral importance of religion itself, namely, its place in a good life and in nurturing good citizens, rather than liberal appeal to respect for self dignity and choice.10 In arguing for respect for religious belief, Sandel focuses on the moral aspect of religion, and this makes him critical of liberal positions on religion in public political forum in modern pluralistic liberal democracy. 2.2

Religious Diversity and Religious Argument in Public Political Discourse

As I have mentioned, the issue of religious argument in public political discourse is connected closely with the fact of religious and moral pluralism in modern democratic societies. It shows the two-fold relation of religious diversity to liberalism: one is its contribution to the emergence of certain liberal values, the other the demand for liberal restraint on religious political argument. Rawls starts with the recognition of religious and moral pluralism as an enduring feature of modern democracy, which inspires him to construct a freestanding political conception of justice and to restrict the engagement of religious doctrine in public political culture. His goal is to avoid the conflict of comprehensive doctrines among citizens in political justification and to prevent those in political power from imposing their particular deep beliefs upon other citizens. Rawls does set aside religious pluralism in public political debate, even though he allows the introduction of religious doctrine into public political deliberations within certain limits. In a similar way, Audi’s proposal to constrain the use of religious reasons in law and public policy advocacy also aims to prevent possible strife arising from the plurality of religions. This liberal respect for and tolerance of religious pluralism, so as to “bracket” it for political purposes, is criticized by Sandel, Perry, and Wolterstorff’s proposal to reflect this pluralism in public political fora. Sandel’s view of the worth of religious liberty by virtue of the content of religious beliefs and the moral contribution of religion is linked with his position on religion in politics. His deliberative mode lies beyond mere respect for the fact of religious pluralism, advocating 

Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, xii. Ibid. 10 Ibid. 



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the engagement and deliberation of various moral and religious arguments in debating political questions. It would, he avers, bring a vital political life to a pluralist society. Perry’s ideal of “ecumenical political dialogue” also attempts to include religious convictions in a religiously and morally pluralistic society, although he adds that only certain religious arguments may be used in political debate freely. This dialogue does not attempt to overcome our differences of moral and religious views; rather, it encourages the participation of a variety of religious and nonreligious beliefs in political debate to some extent, even though we cannot always achieve a common ground through dialogue. Wolterstorff’s “consocial” position permits religious people to bring their whole religious convictions (which form their identify) in political debates. It does not impose any additional restraint on the public expression of religious reasons on political issues. He intends to show respect for the particularities of our fellow citizens and to offer greater space for the presentation of various religious doctrines in political discourse.11 This advocacy of “a politics of multiple communities” is an outcome of advancing a wide range of participation by pluralistic religious people and communities. Sandel, Perry and Wolterstorff’s understanding of religious pluralism rejects the political liberal presupposition of broad agreement on a political conception of justice by precluding or limiting important religious moral values in political discourse, many of these values themselves being the fruit of liberal toleration. Instead of seeking a publicly shared political basis, they focus on religion’s contribution to democratic political life. For them, in a pluralist democracy, it is not adequate simply to tolerate and respect people’s various moral and religious doctrines; this kind of religious and moral pluralism should be reflected and engaged in public political culture, in their deliberations on political issues at stake. And, they assert, some special religious virtues, such as agape in the Christian tradition, should inform the exercise of political power and political choice. 2.3

What is the Focus of the Debate?

The main differences between the positions of liberal thinkers on religion in public political culture and their critics can be found in the understanding and treatment of both issues of religious freedom and religious pluralism in modern pluralist liberal democracy. Both sides share the ideas of respecting the diversity of citizens’ religious beliefs and guaranteeing state’s non-interference with their religious exercise. Their disagreement lies in the extent of free exercise of religion: is it allowed for people to express various religious and moral convictions in public political fora, and if so, what is the appropriate extent or form? 11 Similarly, Jackson argues that liberalism should not lack distinctive identity and selfhood. His ideal of “civic agapism” also contains the achievement of fuller personhood by participating and exercising potential to care for and love others.

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A central theme in the liberal positions is to require an independent and sufficient public reason in making and justifying political choices, whether religious values are included in the political process or not, and to whatever degree political decisions might be relevant to religious beliefs. Thus any introduction of religious views in public political culture should be conditioned by the proviso that the principles and policies advocated by the religious could be adequately supported by public reason. It is obvious that even though the liberals do not exclude religion totally from the political domain, they do give it a marginal or secondary role. In particular, regarding religion in politics, the liberals distinguish public officials from citizens and demand more restraint on the part of the former. Rawls’s ideal of public reason applies to citizens and public officials in public political fora on fundamental political questions, but does not apply to citizens’ personal reflections about these questions or members of associations in reasoning about them.12 Solum allows private citizens to employ religious reasons in public debate while he requires public officials to exclude nonpublic reasons when speaking in their official capacity. Greenawalt states that legislators shall exercise the selfrestraint principle in political decisions more than ordinary citizens. Solum and Greenawalt allow public officials to rely on religious reasons indirectly and to be causally affected by religious grounds in special cases, but officials are required to make their arguments in other, publicly accessible terms so as to avoid explicit reliance on religious convictions. A crucial point in the criticisms of liberal restraint on religious political argument is the alleged inadequacy of public reason in the resolution of some political issues with a moral dimension. In other words, the ideal of public reason and the ideal of liberal democracy may be irrelevant to, or at least insufficient for, the resolution of some political issues; these issues cannot be resolved within public reason alone unless certain moral arguments, religious or nonreligious, are involved in the political process. These critics demand a more flexible public political discourse in which the positive engagement of religious and moral argument allows religious people to rely on their religious convictions in debating and deciding political issues. They seek an open public forum for the free entry of religious arguments into political dialogue. This forum will not be governed by public reason alone; under some circumstances it may appeal to religious arguments even without the necessity of support from the “freestanding” idea or public reasons, since it is held that reasonable people would likely disagree about political conception of justice. In addition, they claim, it mobilizes such motivations as charity and devotion, which enable citizens to achieve unity and participate in the forum with personal care. Here, reasonable comprehensive religious doctrines would be indispensable in political discourse for certain people, and consequently, the “sincere articulation of religiously-based political arguments”13 would be accepted. The critics of 12 See 13

Rawls, Political Liberalism, 215. This is Chaplin’s term, in “Beyond Liberal Restraint,”������ 642. �����



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the liberal restraint on religion in public political debate attempt to construct a political process that allows more space, even a determinative role, for comprehensive religious and moral doctrines. As Quinn sees the matter, the advantage of this kind of “inclusivist ideal” is that “it allows all citizens to express themselves and their deepest values more fully in the political sphere and is apt to mitigate the problem of alienation from the political.”14 The critics of liberal restraint do not, they assert, aim to underestimate some fundamental liberal political values; rather, they underline the positive role of religious beliefs and their positive contribution to modern democratic political life. I have noted that they will encounter some difficulties from their positions: for instance, from the liberal point of view, how to treat the diverse religious and moral doctrines in political decision-making and justification, and how to connect the outcome of wide public deliberation to the political process of decision-making. Obviously, more elaboration on these points is needed. I will not explore these points further here. Rather, I am more concerned with the possible synthesis of the different positions discussed. I note that the liberals allow the use of religious reasons in public political debate within certain restrictions, while their critics do not appeal to religious convictions alone to deal with political issues. In the following, I will try to show the compatibility of their different emphases, in clarifying a position that may embrace both liberal and religious values. 4.4

Two Alternatives: Communal Liberalism and Religious Liberalism

To respect fundamental liberal values while stressing religion’s contribution to the public life of modern pluralist societies, there might be two kinds of liberal alternatives to the political liberals’ position: communal liberalism and religious liberalism. For communal liberalism, I will first mention Brian Stiltner’s proposal based on his understanding of both Michael Sandel and Jacques Maritain. Stiltner points out that Sandel’s defense of religious and moral arguments in political deliberation, and of the moral role of religion with respect to religious liberty as a mediation of liberalism and communitarianism, is motivated by the pursuit of the common good partly provided by religious resources.15 On the other hand, Maritain offers a fuller account of religion’s contribution to the common good of a liberal society, which includes three aspects: intellectual resources for the public debate, conditions for social harmony, and attention to neglected goods.16 This 14

Quinn, “Political Liberalism and Their Exclusion of the Religious,” 157. Stiltner, Religion and the Common Good, 76. 16 Ibid., 178. Here, Maritain specifies Christianity to describe this. Also recall that in Casanova one of three forms of public religion is to maintain the principle of “common good.” 15

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would allow religion, especially its understanding of the human good, to function both in the moral life of our communities and in public political discourse. This ideal of religion’s contribution to the common good is in accord with the public moral and political roles of religion. A liberal society should not set aside religious moral resources in its social and political life. This ideal of religion’s contribution to the common good or the public roles of religion in a liberal society, as Stiltner emphasizes, will not override moral and religious pluralism, yet it requires the engagement of this diversity in public debate on political issues.17 This means that the communal liberalism advocated by Stiltner, as a theoretical synthesis of liberalism and communitarianism, respects both liberal and communitarian principles.18 In the appreciation of religious pluralism stressed by the liberals, communal liberals concentrate on communal moral values and religious moral engagement in public political deliberation, which are often restricted or bracketed by political liberals. The other alternative, religious liberalism, can be found in Quinn, Jackson, and Perry’s positions. Quinn claims that regarding the benefits of the inclusion of the religious in public political discourse, liberalism needs “a minimal exclusion of the religious.”19 His religious liberal position allows that law and public policy advocacy may derive from religious convictions so that religious people would not be alienated in political debate and decision-making. On the other hand, he disagrees with the religious right wing in the United States, which bases its political agenda on religiously inspired precepts.20 In “civic agapism” as a kind of Christian liberalism, Jackson views the diversity of human goods as a blessing to a liberal society; nonetheless he calls for unity in diversity, to be achieved through love. His ideal of a liberal society is based on the aims of both goodness and freedom, and guided by the principle of the “priority of liberal charity.” This ideal of love, in Perry’s view, should be exercised together with political power, only through which an ideal of political community can be achieved. Thus I would say that religious liberals want certain religious virtues to be more active in political life, and some religious arguments to be more effective in debating controversial political issues. In sum, with respect to value pluralism and liberal politics, both communitarian liberals and religious liberals insist on religion’s contribution to democratic political culture, provided that domination by religious authority does not occur. They take this to imply a mutual need between religion and liberalism: as Fowler puts it, liberalism’s need for religion is in its search for community and meaning,

17 18 19 20

Ibid., 180. Ibid., 77, 176. Quinn, “Political Liberalism and Their Exclusion of the Religious,” 159. Ibid., 160.



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and religion’s need for liberalism is in its provision of religious liberty (within limits) and support for religious diversity.21 These two liberalisms suggest an interaction between liberal and religious values in a liberal democracy. It seems to me that some political issues, such as laws and public policies concerning the morality of human conduct, could not be separated from some religious moral arguments, especially their ideas about the human good, even if both sides of the debate have quite different explanation and reliance on these arguments. This relevance of religious beliefs to political life can be understood in and through “the ‘background culture’ of civil society” (Rawls’ term). Some liberals do allow the indirect and occasional influence by “underlying” or “foundational” religious reasons in political choices. If the broader significance of the content of religious beliefs is recognized—and thus religious arguments are encouraged in public deliberation though not relied on in making and justifying political choices—it is possible that from a long-term perspective, some religious values will become common ideas acknowledged by religious and nonreligious people alike. This may occur through religious believers and communities having an impact on civil society by expressing their religious beliefs in public life. If such religious ideas succeed in becoming basic components of the background culture, it will be reasonable for them to be adopted by public officials in their deliberative and justificatory process of political decision-making, as long as they are not expressed in the original religious terms but in publicly accessible terms. In this special way, religious ideas and values may influence political choices indirectly but effectively, and more acceptably than their direct entry into the political process as a basis of political choices. 4.5

The Universal Significance of “Public Religion” and its Problems in the Chinese Context

The issues of the public side of religion as well as the debate on the role of religion in public political debate do not only occur in Western societies, although Western academics take such questions seriously and provide many discussions. The church–state separation doctrine, the modern tendency to secularization as well as to the privatization of religion, and the moral and social problems in modern society make it necessary for religious and political philosophers to reconsider 21 See Fowler, “Religion and Liberal Culture: Unconventional Partnership or Unhealthy Co-Dependency.” Cf. Yong Huang’s attempt to achieve a reflective equilibria between religious ideas of the good and political ideas of the right: “we should allow people to bring their religious ideas of the good and political ideas of the right, together with their many background beliefs, into multiple reflective equilibria by constantly reformulating their religious ideas of the good in light of their political ideas of the right and other background beliefs, and vice versa” (Yong Huang, Religious Goodness and Political Rightness (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press, 2001), 255).

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and relocate the public dimension and role of religion. This is relevant to both community spirit in civil society and the vitality of political life. Indeed, any modern democratic society with religious traditions and resources will encounter the voice of religious people and groups, and will need to deal with the problems of their expression and participation in public life, especially in public political culture. Religion’s public claim and contribution should be included in any democratic institutions. More attention is being paid to the issue of public life in many societies throughout the world: Max Stackhouse claims that “the public is now global in scope and endangered by both secularism and fundamentalism.”22 Some basic values concerning human well-being, such as the freedom of religious exercise, have become universal, and the issue of religion’s public role has been raised in various societies. China, in its openness to and communication with the world, will in its economic, social, and political life be increasingly influenced by the world system, including the role of the public sphere. In this global context, Chinese society will have to meet the appearance and growth of the public sphere and hence the issue of religion in public life. I have studied above the public dimension of religion and the debate on religion in politics by American scholars who draw on their experience of American society. In the following I will first describe the potential problems when the issue of public religion is placed in the Chinese context—problems which are seldom considered by American scholars. First, communal liberalism emphasizes religion’s contribution to the common good both in moral and political life. I also assert the moral role of religion in modern pluralistic liberal society. Yet, probably because of the wide recognition of diverse religious and moral doctrines, people have not paid much attention to the moral function of religion in a pluralist society. Chinese society embraces a rich tradition of religious thought and practice, and great political, social, and economic changes are taking place there, moving China in a more liberal and democratic direction. In the meanwhile, many moral problems have arisen in Chinese society. It would be helpful to explore the contribution of its religious moral resources to China’s moral transformation in this transitional period. The affirmation of religion’s public influence in the moral realm would become a drive to promote the right to religious practice and to seek religion’s further involvement in political culture in China, which lacks a tradition of offering a public forum for religious input into political debate. Recall that I have suggested that the content of religious beliefs may properly impact on the political process in publicly accessible terms through their long-term assimilation by civil society. This can be seen as one role that religious beliefs can play in and through background culture. In China, it seems that the acceptance of 22 Max L. Stackhouse, “Public Theology and the Future of Democratic Society,” in Dieter T. Hesse (ed.), The Church’s Public Role: Retrospect and Prospect (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 63���� ������ –83.



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religion’s moral contribution in civil society has occurred before that of religion’s direct engagement in politics. Thus, this affirmation of religion’s moral role in civil society would, in my view, not only promote free religious exercise but also have a beneficial indirect impact on political life. This approach helps us consider the potential interaction between the public moral and political roles of religion. Second, there remain two problems in the topic of religion in public political fora. One concerns religious pluralism and religious participation in politics. Religious pluralism not only raises the problem of how to deal with the relation of religious doctrine to political issues, but also the issue of how to introduce religious diversity into the political process under certain circumstances. Suppose we accept the proposal that the diversity of religious beliefs be reflected in the political discourse to some degree. We may encounter even more difficulties in dialogue and deliberation if the diversity is a matter of the multiplicity of religions rather than denominational differences within one religious tradition. This problem occurs in a society like China with its varied religious traditions but no single dominant religion. Another problem about religion in politics is the differences between religious doctrines and religious organizations with respect to their involvement in politics. It seems that the debate pays more attention to the involvement of religious arguments in political issues than the participation of religious communities: for example, Rawls’s position on reasonable comprehensive religious and nonreligious doctrines and their relation to political justice and public reason, and Sandel’s backing of religious and moral arguments in political deliberation. Even though Audi and Wolterstorff are concerned with religious people and organizations,23 they do not provide many thoughts on the differences between religious doctrines and religious organizations in terms of their involvement in political culture. In China, as I will show, the doctrinal and organizational differences among religions, and the state’s distinctive attitude to religious beliefs and religious activities, make it necessary to consider different approaches to the contributions of religious values and religious communities respectively to the political process. Stiltner notes this distinction by suggesting that the ideal of “a politics of common good” would not only allow the engagement of religious arguments but also allow “citizens to participate in the political process through their particular voluntary communities—including churches and religious institutions.”24 To contrast religious doctrines and religious communities, I understand doctrines to be scripturally or traditionally based precepts that may be utilized by religious

23 Audi’s principles of “ecclesiastical neutrality,” “clerical neutrality,” and “theo-ethical equilibrium” place constraints on the political actions of church, clergy and religious citizens, while Wolterstorff’s concern is with the social-political existence of religious people. 24 Stiltner, 76.

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people but may also be acquired by nonreligious people as well.25 On the other hand, religious communities may�������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������� become involve����������������������������� ������������������������������������ d���������������������������� in public political debate on issues of�������������������������������������������������������������������� particular political �������������������������������������������������������� and moral ������������������������������������ concern and interest���������������� to them,������� where they ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� consider their religious beliefs to be relevant or when they consider their interests as an organization to be at stake. It seems that the activities of religious communities in political debates and decisions operate on a different level and sometimes to different ends from religious convictions themselves when it comes to political involvement. Bearing in mind the above basic issues, I will in parts II and III explore an appropriate role for religion in public��������������������������������������������� life���������������������������������������� ,��������������������������������������� especially in������������������������� political culture, in a democratic China. A starting-point will be to look at the unique picture of religion and its political context in China, and my purpose is to clarify what religious freedom should mean in such a context.

25 For instance, they may be adopted by government, public officials, and ordinary citizens in their political discourse and decisions, even though they may be nonreligious individuals.

PArT II Religion and its Political Context in China

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Chapter 5

Religion in China In the Chinese context, it is important to note that religious engagement in public political culture relies not only on the construction of democratic institutions but also on the special characteristics of religion in China. In this part I will describe some major features of religion in China and its political context, with particular attention to the relationship between religion and the state, especially in������������������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������������ communist China. These features will impact on how the relation between religion and politics will unfold in China. 5.1

Religiosity and Religious Diversity in China

Before discussing the political role of religion in China, it is necessary to define the religious character of Chinese society. It has been pointed out that “as much as 80 percent of China’s population may be termed ‘religious’ if customary beliefs and practices in the countryside are included.” In my view, China is a religious country essentially by virtue of its rich and widespread traditions of religious practice (when and where allowed), beliefs, and religious life, especially in rural areas and among ethnic minorities throughout the country. These religious beliefs and practices play an active role in Chinese society, even though the current state is secular due to the dominant atheistic political ideology. I agree with C.K. Yang’s  Ted Jelen notes that “the contributions and costs of religious involvement in democratic politics depend crucially on the style of democratic politics under consideration” (Ted G. Jelen, “Religion and the American Political Culture: Alternative Models of Citizenship and Discipleship,” Sociology of Religion 56 (1995), 271–���� 84�� ).  Here, I will confine my study to religions already established in China. They include five major religions/denominations (�������������������������������������������������� namely, ������������������������������������������ Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism, and Protestantism), as well as folk religions, which have a long tradition in Chinese society. I believe covering these religions will be adequate to describe and explore the issue of religion in Chinese political culture. I do not address Confucianism, although it has typically been mixed syncretically with traditional religions in Chinese history.  Kevin Boyle and Juliet Sheen (eds), Freedom of Religion and Belief: A World Report (New York: Routledge, 1977),����� 177. ����  Fenggang Yang claims, ����������������������������������������������������� “At the turn of the twenty-first century … China may have become one of the most religious countries in the world”�������������������������� ������������������������� (Fenggang Yang, “Between Secularist Ideology and Desecularizing Reality: The Birth and Growth of Religious Research in Communist China,”� Sociology of Religion 65/ 2 (2004),���������� 101������ –����� 19��� )��.

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view of the continuity of religious influence in the life of common people, who are expected not to challenge communist ideology in contemporary China: “Theistic beliefs remain a strong influence among the people in spite of persistent interference and systematic control from the new faith. The current picture is one of both a new nontheistic faith and the old theistic traditions.” C.K. Yang then cites at least two factors that show the importance of religion in Chinese society. One is “the high density of temples and shrines” in the whole society. The other is that many religious beliefs are largely diffused into social life, thereby becoming an integrative force for social institutions and organized groups; as Yang puts it, “the dominance of the diffused structural form made religious influence pervasive.” To describe religious life in China, two sorts of religiosity are worth mentioning: local religiosity and ethnic religiosity. Local religiosity can be seen in the regional variations of different religions in China. This is mainly demonstrated in the high level of religiosity in southern China and the main religious beliefs there are Buddhism and popular religion. The other particularly strong religiosity in China exists in regions of some ethnic national minorities. Usually, the entire population of each ethnic minority can be identified with one religion; for instance, almost all Tibetans are (at least nominally) Buddhists, and most Huis are Muslims. Their particular religious belief is a powerful sanction to the local social structure. “Religious creeds, doctrines, and commandments form common moral norms undergirding social life.” It is difficult to give an exact number of religious followers in today’s China, since official statistics do not include believers in unregistered religious�������� groups�.10 According to a recent unofficial estimate, the total number of religious believers



C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961),������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 401. Here he regards the power of communism as a “new faith������������������������� ,������������������������ ” ���������������������� at least in the sense of state���������������������������������� ’��������������������������������� s ������������������������������� attempted enforce�������������� ��������������������� ment���������� , I think.  C.K. Yang, “The Role of Religion in Chinese Society,” in John Meskill and J. Mason Gentzler (eds), An Introduction to Chinese Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973), 644–5.  See Wenfang Tang, “Religion and Society in China and Taiwan,” in Shiping Hua (ed.), Chinese Political Culture 1989–2000 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), 298������ ��������� –����� 31��� 9.  The total population of ethnic minorities in China is about 100 million.  Luo Zhufeng (ed.), Religion under Socialism in China, trans. Donalid MacInnis and Zheng Xi’an (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1991), 34. Wenfang Tang describes the same phenomenon from an anthropological perspective: “In regions under the influence of a particular culture or religion, religiosity should also be strong” (Tang, “Religion and Society in China and Taiwan,” 301). 10 The official “White Paper on Freedom of Religious Belief in China” (1997) states that there are ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� over 100 ���������������������������������������������������������������������� million religious followers, more than 85,000 sites for religious activities, and������������������������������������������������������������������ over 3,000 (registered) ������������������������������������������������������ religious ����������������������������������������� organizations throughout China�.



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is over 200 million.11 In ����������������������������������������������������������� spite of uncertainty ����������������������������������������������� over the figure�������������������� , an ������������������ undoubted fact is the huge absolute number of believers in various religious practices, and the widespread influence of religion in Chinese society. In terms of religious diversity, China is obviously characterized by a multiplicity of religions, rather than variety within one religion. I understand this diversity to arise from the following three factors. First, among the five officially recognized religions/denominations (Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism), it is hard to say which has dominant influence in Chinese society.12 Second, the mixture of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism is a common phenomenon in many religious practices in China. In other words, syncretism, mostly in the form of folk religion, is the religion of the majority of China’s religious believers. This mixture derives “its practice of meditation from Buddhism, rules of longevity from Taoism, and ethical standards from Confucianism.”13 Thus the most characteristic Chinese religious ideal is “harmony” or “unity” of these three traditions of belief. This sort of unity is understood in three senses by Wing-tsit Chan: equality, mutual identification, and One Source.14 In the coexistence of these three beliefs, their mixed practice by the same people, and the general absence of tension���������������������� ��������������������� between�������������� religions���� in traditional Chinese culture, this characteristic religious pluralism is different from the religious experience of the West, or the Middle East.15 Third, there may be a revival of traditional popular religion,������������������� ������������������ and the emergence of some new religious sects in Chinese society, some of which have arisen because they disagree with and ��������������������������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������������� refuse����������������������������������������������������� to participate in official�������������������������� ���������������������������������� ������������������������� religious organizations. Since China began to open itself up to the outside world in the 1980s, there has been more contact with Western culture and more active intellectual and cultural exploration by Chinese people; as a result, Chinese beliefs and religious practices have become more diverse. The variety within one religion in contemporary China is not as explicit as it is in some modern Western societies, such as the United States. In the case 11

Sheng-chi Liu, “Religious Development in Mainland China in the Reform Era,” Studies on Mainland China 44/12 (2001),������� 65���� –��� 88�. 12 According to t����������������������������������������������������������������� he “White Paper on Freedom of Religious Belief in China” (1997)��, there are 18 million Muslims, 4 million Catholics, and 10������������������������������������ million Protestants���������������� . This estimate is still conservative especially ���������������������������������������������������������� regarding������������������������������������������������� Catholics and Protestants. It does not give the numbers of Buddhists and Taoist������������������������������������������������������ s����������������������������������������������������� , which���������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������� some other reports �������������������������� put at�������������������� 100 ������������������� million and���� 5�� 0 million respectively����������������������������������������������������������������� . See ��������������������������������������������������������������� Sheng-chi Liu, “Religious Development in Mainland China in the Reform Era,” 79. 13 Wing-tsit Chan, Religious Trends in Modern China (New York: Octagon, 1969), 178. 14 See further analysis in Chan, 180–81. 15 Julia Ching, Chinese Religions (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), 205, 222, 223. This mixture may be contrasted with the more exclusivist “desert” religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

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of Protestantism, the denominational divisions within that grouping were eliminated in China by the unified national religious associations in the 1950s. The Protestant “Three Self ” Patriotic Movement (TSPM)16 has consolidated all Protestant denominations into one without regard for their differences of doctrine or liturgy. To achieve the post-denominational goal of church unity under central control, this church movement also attempted to free the Chinese church from foreign-run organizations, since denominationalism was seen as a relic of imperialism at the beginning of communist China.������������������� Thus, “����������� ������������ there is a�� tendency within the leadership to see unity in terms of centralization and control rather than as a theological concept concerning the nature of the Church.�”17 Thus, in the Chinese context (in which there are many competing religions, rather than a single dominant religion), diversity among religions is more basic and important than denominational diversity within a particular religion. Provided that more freedom is given to religious activities by the government in the future, it may be expected to lead to more religious groups within any particular religion and the emergence of new religious sects in Chinese society, so that the variety within each religion may become more obvious. Even so, the very fact of diversity among religions will remain in China, and syncretism is likely to remain prominent. Julia Ching claims that “the future face of China, we may safely predict, will be shaped by a continuing transformation marked by syncretism. It will be pluralist and multiform.”18 5.2

Characteristics of Religion in China: Religious Doctrines and Religious Organizations

As stated above, there are many religious belief systems in Chinese society, each of which has its own identity. In the following I will describe this diversity in terms of the nature of religious organization and religious doctrine, roughly dividing religious beliefs into three groups: Buddhism and Taoism, considered together with popular religion; and Christianity and Islam. 5.2.1 Buddhism, Taoism, and Popular Religion To describe Buddhism and Taoism in China, I will use the term “institutional religion” as defined by C.K. Yang. In Yang’s view, as institutional religions, Buddhism and Taoism have an independent theology or canonical scriptures,

16

The “three selves” are self-government, self-support, and self-propagation. Bob Whyte, “������������������������������������������������������������������ ������������������������������������������������������������������� Some Reflections on Protestant Life in China,��������������������� ”�������������������� in Alan Hunter and Don Rimmington�������� ������� (eds), Chinese Tradition and Christian Life in the People��������������� ’�������������� s Republic of China: All Under Heaven (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1992), 55���� –��� 68. 18 Ching, 228. 17



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worship symbols and rituals, organization of personnel, and independent function, with these features together making up a separate social institution.19 On the other hand, even though these two institutional religions have an independent system of scripture and worship, they lack organizational strength in traditional Chinese society. This weak structural position, according to C.K. Yang, is demonstrated in the lack of the following: priesthood, financial strength, leaders’ participation in community affairs, organized laity, and active development of organizational allegiance between temple and laity.20 The organizational weakness of these two religions comes partly from the state’s control and suppression of religious organizations in Chinese history, and means they have not historically exerted a strong political influence on Chinese society.21 Even though these points mainly apply to traditional Chinese society, in the period of communist China, due to the restrictions placed on religious organizations and activities, the organizational weakness of Buddhism and Taoism has remained.������������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������ Although there are two national patriotic religious organizations (Buddhist Association of ������������������������������������������������������������ China and ��������������������������������������������������� Taoist Association����������������������������� of China�������������������� ), both established in the 1950s, their function is to implement the������������������������������������� state������������������������������� ’s religious policy and manage religious activities in the service of the state’s���������������������������������� political ��������������������������������� purpose���������������� s��������������� . They are far from being autonomous religious organizations that engage independently in public affairs. This structural and organizational problem is likely to remain a long-term feature of these two religious groupings in China by virtue of their religious identities, historical inheritance, and the continuous control of religion by the state. This organizational problem of Buddhism and Taoism is also related to their mixed practice alongside other traditional beliefs in the form of popular religion among ordinary Chinese people. This makes it difficult to form from any of these religions a single religious group with a strong identity, thus further contributing to their organization weakness. Throughout history, even today, millions of Chinese practice popular religion as a syncretic religion. Wen-hui Tsai describes Chinese popular religion in terms of a lack of clear religious boundaries—that is, “mixing gods from various faiths.”22 This syncretism also goes together with the polytheistic nature of popular religion in China. People worship many kinds of gods according to their 19 C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society, 294–5. Even though Yang’s works describes religions in China covering traditional China up to the 1950s, I believe his descriptions of Chinese religious life remain relevant to present-day Chinese society despite great social and political change. For this reason, I will rely quite heavily on his account of religion in China. 20 C.K. Yang, “The Role of Religion in Chinese Society,” 665–7. 21 C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society, 296. 22 Wen-hui Tsai, “Historical Personalities in Chinese Folk Religion: A Functional Interpretation,” in Sarah Allan and Alvin P. Cohen (eds.��� )��, Legend, Lore, and Religion in China (San Francisco: Chinese Materials Center, 1979), 23–42.

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diverse needs. These gods have various moral and magical functions. “Each god, theoretically, has a designated duty or function for the purpose of helping and assisting people.”23 Another important characteristic of popular religion is its absence of canonical scriptures�������������������������������������������������������������� in a systematic form����������������������������������������� ; it also shares Buddhism’s and Taoism’s organizational weakness.24 It does not have religious institutions independent of Chinese society. Some forms of religious practice, such as ancestor worship, are basically practiced by family������������������������������������������������� (or clan)��������������������������������������� structure �������������������������������������� rather ���������������������������� than ���������������� by a complex of community. Laurence Thompson says that “family religion is basic; individual and communal religion is secondary.”25 This sort of family religious practice does not contribute to the formation of a religious community���������������������� in the��������������� ������������������ strict sense��. Even though it does not exist as an entity independent of Chinese society and culture,26 popular religion has become a component of all major social groups and institutions through diffusing its concepts, cults, and personnel into these secular social groups.27 As shown above, a problem that is common to Buddhism, Taoism and popular religion in China is organizational weakness. If we seek the reasons, the state’s control���������������� and restriction of religious�������������������������������������� organizations������������������������ is one factor, and the polytheistic nature of these religions is another. According to Meir Shahar and Robert Weller’s estimation, “the state religion, Daoism, Buddhism and popular religion are all polytheistic.”28 Among ordinary religious believers,29 the objects of worship cover natural phenomena, legendary figures, Taoist masters, Indian Buddhist importations or Chinese Buddhist creations, famous statesmen, just magistrates, and so on. Not just individuals, but even groups can be objects of worship.30 These gods serve their needs both in spiritual and material life. To some degree, this polytheism is an obstacle to the development of religious organizations in these religions. Believers’ connections to several religions at the same time results in their worshiping many gods in different places on different occasions. For pragmatic reasons, instead of committing themselves to one religion and one god, they either participate in more than one religion or combine these religions together. “The tie of worship could not be concentrated on a single 23

Ibid,�������� p. 27. ���� See ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� Meir Shahar and Robert P. Weller, “Introduction: Gods and Society in China,” in Meir Shahar and Robert P. Weller (eds), Unruly Gods: Divinity and Society in China (Honolulu, HI������������������������������������������ :����������������������������������������� University of Hawaii Press, 1996), 1–36. 25 Laurence G. Thompson, Chinese Religion: an Introduction, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1996), 31. 26 Meir Shahar and Robert P. Weller say: “Popular religion by and large lacks religious institutions independent of secular organizations” (Shahar and Weller, “Introduction: Gods and Society in China,”����� 4). ���� 27 C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society, 294–5. 28 Shahar and Weller, “Introduction: Gods and Society in China,” 2. 29 The professional clergy from one particular religion would be an exception here. 30 See Thompson’s description in Chinese Religion, 54, 56. 24



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temple as an organizational focus.”31 This syncretic nature of ordinary people’s religious belief means that it is hard to tell apart Buddhists, Taoists, and believers belonging to a strictly ������������������������������������������������������������������ specified ��������������������������������������������������������� traditional religion. The formation and growth of any religious groups among these religions becomes difficult. 5.2.2 Christianity and Islam A contrast with Buddhism, Taoism, and popular religion in China is provided by the practice of Christianity and Islam. Both of the latter have systematic theology and canonical scriptures. In addition, the God they believe in is exclusive����� and� jealous. One is not allowed to be both Christian and Muslim, or be either and simultaneously a believer in any other religion. Richard Niebuhr interprets this sort of monotheism as “loyalty to One beyond all the many,” which should be distinguished from two other forms of faith: “a pluralism that has many objects of devotion and a social faith that has one object, which is, however, only one among many.”32 Faith in and loyalty to the One God beyond all the many calls forth a strong moral vision among the followers of these faiths, by focusing on their own particular congregation in worship. It enables the formation of an effective religious community. In Christianity, the church embraces certain believers who attend its������������ activities ����������� regularly.��������������������������������������������������������������������� Besides the system of national Christian organizations�������������� ��������������������������� (������������ the��������� �������� Chinese Protestant “Three Self ” Patriotic Movement, the China Christian Council��,� the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, and the Chinese Catholic Bishops’ Conference������������������������������������������������������������������� ), an ���������������������������������������������������������������� important phenomenon in contemporary China is the unofficial church movement. Refusing������������������������������������������������������� to ������������������������������������������������������ accept ��������������������������������������������������� official ����������������������������������� church����������������������������� structure������������������� s, some ���������������� Christians gather and �������������������������������������������������������������������� worship������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������ voluntarily in unauthorized groups, either ������������������������ for geographical convenience or for doctrinal identification. These groups����������������������� ����������������������������� may have consider����� able� organizational dynamism��. Muslim believers in China are usually connected to ethnic minorities, ten of which������������������������������������������������������������������������� follow ������������������������������������������������������������������������ Islam; each of them can be considered an Islam community. Muslim national minorities are a power group in China – one-fifth of its minorities – and have a history of defending their own culture.33

31

C.K. Yang, “The Role of Religion in Chinese Society,” 667. H. Richard Niebuhr, Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1960), 24. 33 Boyle and Sheen, 183. 32

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Chapter 6

The Political Context of Religion in China After my brief description of some of the characteristics of religions in China, I will turn to the political context of religion, with particular attention to the relation between religion and the state. While I look to some extent at traditional Chinese society, I will concentrate my discussion on the period of communist� China, particularly since the 1980s. During m���������������������������������������������������������������������� any������������������������������������������������������������������� periods of Chinese history, the state’s control over religion has led religious groupings to concentrate on a persistent struggle to practice their beliefs freely, as opposed to engaging positively in public political culture. As C.K. Yang points out, “to assure itself of the desired support from religion and at the same time to minimize religious organizations as competitive political forces, the Chinese state exercised elaborate control over religious belief and organization.” The government’s attempt to supervise religion, or to use religion for political purposes, confirmed both the historically subordinate role of religion in China and the restriction of religious interference in public affairs of the state. This is the basic picture of the political context of religion in China, which explains why the nature of religion’s potential contribution to political life has not been widely studied or accepted. 6.1

The��������������������������������������������� State’s Tolerance ������������������������������������ and Management of ����������� Religion

Throughout Chinese history up to the present the basic pattern �������������������������� ������������������ of religion–state relations—the state’s control of religion—has remained unchanged. This control, according to C.K. Yang’s analysis, involves control over rituals; interpretation of

 ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� Since the 1980s, normal religious activities have again been allowed by the

government, and there has to some extent been a religious revival.  C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society, 105.  Julian Pas notes�������������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������������� that “the difference between the present and China’s imperial past is one of variations on the same theme: control and manipulation; the degree of control depends on who is in power at the moment” (Julian F. Pas, “Introduction: Chinese Religion in Transition,” in Julian F. Pas (ed.), The Turning of the Tide: Religion in China Today (Hong Kong: Royal Asiatic Society and Oxford University Press, 1989), 1–24).

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religious doctrine, organizations, and priesthood; and repression of heterodox religious movements. I��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� t should be recalled that i������������������������������������������������������ n Chin������������������������������������������������ a’s early��������������������������������������� history, ����������������������������� religious sects often played an active role in the struggle for political power, and many ������������������������������ ������������������������� political uprisings������ were connected with religion�������������������������������� , either directly or indirectly. ������������������������� This led to government��� al� control of religion in ����������������������������������������������������������������� order to neutralize its potential threat to������������������� ������������������ secular authority ���������� and ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� leadership, as a source of “possible subversion of the sociopolitical order” or “political rebellion by religiously organized groups, especially by unapproved to control religious and unsupervised organizations.” So, for government, ��������������������� organizational activities is to ��������������������������������������������� weaken��������������������������������������� “the �������������������������������������� structural position of centrally institutional religion in Chinese society.” It also accounts for the organizational weakness of some religions in China, as discussed in the previous chapter. Government control has probably led to the struggle by some religious sects to achieve the full freedom of religious practice, giving rise to resistance to political power. C.K. Yang summarizes this political role of religion in Chinese history: “The sanctioning function, the governmental attempt to control religion, and the sporadic outbreak of religious resistance against control as well as the active participation of religion in the struggle for political power characterized the political role of religion in Chinese history.” One aspect of the religion–state relationship in China, then, is the state’s control of religion to prevent its political resistance and rebellion, and to ensure its service to government.10 For this���������������������������������������������� purpose�������������������������������������� , the government may stress religious moral teachings and the religious contribution to the cultivation of a good citizen in the community. By serving rather than rebelling against the government, religion may gain support from the government. The state’s support for religion that serves the state’s own interests, and the state’s control of religion, are two sides of the same coin.11 Jacques Gernet describes three purposes for which religion could be officially recognized and encouraged: to reinforce total order (cosmic, natural, political, or 

C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society, 180. I���������� bid., 105.  C.K. Yang, “The Role of Religion in Chinese Society,” 656, 657.  Ibid., 657.  Perhaps ironically, popular religion in China could be said to have contributed to governmental control of its activities, since it lacked strong organization itself; for this reason, their relationship with government is “relatively harmonious.” See Tsai, “Historical Personalities in Chinese Folk Religion: A Functional Interpretation,” 32.  C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society, 105. 10 C.K. Yang, “The Role of Religion in Chinese Society,”������ 656. ����� 11 This point about religion and state in China is also made by Emily Martin Ahern. She writes: “Chinese religion and ritual may have served the ends of government officials in important ways,” and “religion and ritual in the hands of those outside officialdom could have threatened the authority of officials in other ways” (Emily Martin Ahern, Chinese Ritual and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 78). 



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religious), to strengthen public morality, and to benefit state stability and collective prosperity.12 The support of religion by the government may be understood as the state using religion for political goals. In Pas’s view, there have been four such types of use in Chinese history: 1 religion was frequently used to establish royal or imperial authority, divine sanction or divine legitimation of power; 2 religion occasionally provided an expedient escape from political disaster; 3 religious organizations, especially Taoism and Buddhism, were frequently supported by rulers in order to ensure the sympathy and cooperation of the masses; 4 many Chinese emperors, from the T’ang through the Ming dynasties, have summoned prominent Buddhist or Taoist masters to their palaces to serve as counselors or to lecture to the imperial household.13 It is obvious that in rendering service to the government for ������������������� its socio���������� political� objectives�������������������������������������������������������������������������� , religion in China has never had any independent position. The religions that are recognized and supported by the government�������������������������� ������������������������� would neither be allowed to influence political matters or to control political power, nor to have a relatively free voice in political life. In this sense, in Chinese history “there has never been a state religion or national political power combining politics with religion.”14 If we consider the situation of religious resistance to state control and the struggle for religious rights among some religions, here we see the other side of religion in relation to the state: alliance, yet without independence. Both religion’s subordination to state control and its service to the state’s political purposes for the sake of the state support can be understood as evidence of the state’s limited tolerance for religious belief and activities����������������� rather than ���� the active engagement that����������������������������������������������������������� full freedom of������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������� religious practice implies. ����������������������� As Pas points out, “although the situation changed with each dynasty and even with individual rulers, religion remained subject to state control. The state, on the one hand, supported religion for various reasons of its own; on the other hand, it never gave religion a totally free hand.”15 Thus a precondition of religious tolerance, or of

12

Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures, trans. by Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 109. 13 Pas, “Introduction: Chinese Religion in Transition,”����� 3–4. ���� 14 Peng Yao and Li Chengdong , “On the Historical Characteristics of Religions in China,” Social Sciences in China 13/2 (Summer 1992), 166–77. See also Merle Goldman, “Religion in Post-Mao China,” Annals of the American Academy of Politics and Social Sciences 483 (1986), 146–56. 15 Julian F. Pas, “The Post-Deng Era and the Future of Religion in China,” in Richard H. Roberts (ed.), Religion and the Transformations of Capitalism (London and New York: Routledge, 1995),�������� 310–32. �������

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gaining support and protection from the state, is that religious authority does not threaten the state with deviation from the dictates of political power.16 On the other hand, the limited tolerance of diverse religious beliefs can also be thought of as a strategy for avoiding conflict between����������������������� the ���������������������� various religions of Chinese society. This ����������������������������������������������������� helps us���������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������ understand ���������������������������� what R. Ransdorp������������ says about Chinese religions��������������������������������������������������������������� : “the absence of strictly religious conflicts is on the whole very characteristic of Chinese religions.”17 ������������������������������������� To give a certain space to religious practice can also �������������������������������������������������������������������� decrease ��������������������������������������������������������������� the potential resistance ���������������������������������������� and rebelliousness ������������������������� connected to religious ������������������������������������������������������������������� impulses. As Pas points out, “… [to] persecute religion is counterproductive.”18 As a matter of fact, in communist China, from the early 1950s onwards, religious organizations and believers experienced continuing restrictions on their religious practice, and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) closed down religious sites and prohibited all public religious activities. In the 1980s came constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religious belief in China, once again allowing normal religious activities.19 On the other hand, the government also placed all the activities of religious organizations under a central organ in order to serve the purpose of “the accommodation of religion to�������������������� ���������������������� socialist society.” The current Chinese government’s treatment of religion������������������������ tends to be pragmatic�� �����������. It does not encourage religion or attempt������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������ to eliminate it, but requires religion to cooperate with the government. The state’s tolerance of religion only extends to five officially recognized religions and their normal activities within the structure ���������� of state-sanctioned religious organizations (Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, and Catholic and Protestant Christianity).20 These national patriotic organizations supported by the state are the instruments of governmental �������������� management ��� of religious activities.������������������������������������������������������������� All��������������������������������������������������������� r������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������� eligious groups are monitored by a strict registration process ���������������������������������������������������������������������� administered ��������������������������������������������������������� by these national organizations under the supervision of the Religious Affairs Bureau���������������������� of������������������� the State Council. Religious activities are only allowed in officially designated and registered places of worship. Other religious groups and activities outside these places are regarded as illegal and ���������� thus will 16

Peng Yao and Li Chengdong, “On the Historical Characteristics of Religions in China,” 17�� 4�. 17 R. Ransdorp, “Official and Popular Religion in the Chinese Empire,” in Pieter Hendrik Vrijhof and Jacques Waardenburg (eds), Official and Popular Religion: Analysis of a Theme for Religious Studies (The Hague: Mouton, 1979), 387������ ��������� –����� 426��. 18 Pas, “The Post-Deng Era and the Future of Religion in China,” 327. 19 Article 36 of the Constitution��������������������������������������������������� of the People������������������������������������� ’������������������������������������ s Republic ������������������������� of China ���������������������� (issued ���������������� in ����� 1982� and amended in 2004) says that “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief ” and “The state protects normal religious activities.”������������������� ������������������ “����������������� Normal religious activities”������������������������������������������������������ means those activities under governmental������������ ������������������������ management�. ����������� 20 The������������������������������������������������������������������������������ national religious organizations are: the ��������������������������������������� Buddhist ����������������������������������� Association��������������� of China������ , the D������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ aoist������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Association������������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ of China���������������������������������������������������������� , the Islamic Association��������������������������������� of China������������������������ , the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, the Chinese Catholic Bishops’ Conference, the Chinese Protestant “Three Self ” Patriotic Movement (TSPM), and the China Christian Council (CCC).



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encounter repression��������������������������������������������������������� . Again, a pragmatic consideration here is that religion serves the state’s needs and goals when under central control, by monitoring and regulating religious groups and their ����������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������� activities. ����������������������������� One may say ����������������� that the Chinese �������� regime tolerates religion to some extent.21 Under these circumstances, the protection of the five religions takes place on the condition that they conform to state-approved principles and organizations, and cooperate with the state in its political goals. However, other religious sects are not included in the protected groups. Since������������������������������� the 1990s��������������������� , the government has noticeably tightened its reins on religious activities by issuing supplementary documents, such as the “Regulations Governing Venues for Religious Activities” and the “Regulations Governing the Religious Activities of Foreign Nationals within China” (both 1994). I���������������������������������������������������������������������������� n 2004, the ���������������������������������������������������������������� government������������������������������������������������������ issued����������������������������������������������� a���������������������������������������������� document entitled “������������������������� �������������������������� Regulations on Religious Affairs�� ,”22 replacing the 1994 regulations on venues for religious ��������������� activities����� , to be effective on March����������������������������������������������������������� 1,�������������������������������������������������������� 2005��������������������������������������������������� . This��������������������������������������������� claim��������������������������������������� s�������������������������������������� to be the first comprehensive ������� set of regulations����������������������������������������������������������������������� concerning religious affairs������������������������������������������ ,����������������������������������������� and aim��������������������������������� s�������������������������������� to provide a national guide to religious��������������������������������������������������������������������� administration, but it remains unchanged ��������������������������� from the earlier documents with����������������������������������������������������������������������������� regard to the basic model of management of ��������������������������������� religio�������������������������� n in China. This document is ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ considered by some������������������������������������������������������������ to be ����������������������������������������������������� a���������������������������������������������������� significant step����������������������������������� ��������������������������������������� toward building a legal framework for�������������������������������������� regulat������������������������������ ing��������������������������� religio������������������� us affairs��������� by law. The question therefore still remains as to whether the government guarantees full and free exercise of religion. “Freedom of religion became freedom of religious belief and freedom of religious activities became freedom of ‘normal’ religious practices,” Boyle and Sheen noted in comparing the latest regulations with their predecessors.23 It appears that in the last two decades the state has been more sensitive to the practical and organizational exercise of religion than to religious beliefs per se, and thus has made a great effort to retain control of religious activities through its central authorities. The government tends to see religion as a force competing with its political ideology, therefore it is particularly cautious with the activities of religious organizations, and tries to prevent them from putting up political resistance to state authorities and policies. “The religious organizations must structurally become a part of the Communist sociopolitical organizational system and accept strict control from the Communist authorities.”24 W����������������������������������������������������������������������� ithin the state-������������������������������������������������������� management system of religious affairs, many����������� patriotic religious organizations������������������������������������������������������������������ and their leaders������������������������������������������������ , in their overall work, will ����������������������� have to serve ���������� the state����������������������������������������������������������������������������� ’���������������������������������������������������������������������������� s��������������������������������������������������������������������������� political goals. ��������������������������������������������������������� On many occasions,��������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������� including their ���������������������� statements������������ concerning 21 See Boyle and Sheen, 177, 180. See also Peng Liu, “Church and State Relations in China: Characteristics and Trends,” in Beatrice Leung (������ ������� ed.��� )��, Church and State Relations in 21st Century Asia (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, 1996), 41–55. 22 The �������������������������������������������������������������������������� r������������������������������������������������������������������������� egulations include provisions on the protection of the lawful rights and interests of���������������������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ religious������������������������������������������������������������������ ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� bodies, sites for religious�������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������� activities��������������������������� ,�������������������������� and���������������������� ������������������������� religious personnel. 23 Boyle and Sheen, 180. 24 C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society, 393.

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public issues, it is said that they make ������������������������������������������ adjustments and reinterpretations of their doctrines and principles to conform to the interests of communism.25 The Christian national ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������ patriotic��������������������������������������������������������� organizations are sometimes����������������������������� criticized as “secularizing orientations”������������������������������������� influenced ������������������������� by the������������������� dominant���������� ideology.26 ������������������������ For instance, for these organizations, the construction of Christian theological��������������������������� �������������������������������������� thought in China ��������� involves a process of��������������������������������������������������������������������� transform����������������������������������������������������������� ing�������������������������������������������������������� and reinterpret���������������������������������������� ing������������������������������������� certain����������������������������� ������������������������������������ theological doctrines������� ,������ such as eschatology������������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ and justification by faith, which are not������������������������� considered�������������� suitable for communist society�.27 Although it is ������������������������������������������������������ observed���������������������������������������������� that there have been some attempts among the national �������������������������������������������������������������������� patriotic religious������������������������������������������������� organizations to become more autonomous��������� ,�������� and���� to� strengthen�������������������������������������������������������������������� their�������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������� religious identity ������������������������������������������ by showing�������������������������������� some concern ������������������ for��������������� the need������ s����� and interests of ������������������������������������������������������������������������� religious���������������������������������������������������������������� circles�������������������������������������������������������� ,������������������������������������������������������� these attempts mainly appear in the area of religious education rather than wider social and public life.28 As Fuk-tsang Ying suggests, these organizations�������������������������������������������������������������� have a twofold task:����������������������������������������� one is the official task ��������������� of������������� serv�������� ing th��e state������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ’������������������������������������������������������������������������������ s political objectives�������������������������������������������������������� ,������������������������������������������������������� and the other the ������������������������������������ unofficial�������������������������� task �������������������� of������������������ represent�������� ing����� and protect��������������������������������������� ing������������������������������������ the interests of religious��������� ������������������ circles.29 How to balance and ������������������ fulfill����������� these two tasks requires these organizations to ������������������������������������������ have a ����������������������������������� properly �������������������������� functioning��������������� �������������� relationships� with both ������������������������������������������������� the �������������������������������������������� government and with religious believers�. Two points need to be made here. The Chinese government requires that religious groups interpret their doctrines and adjust their organization so as to fulfill the principle of “������������������������������������������������������������ ������������������������������������������������������������� the accommodation �������������������������������������������������������� of ������������������������������������������ religion������������������������������� ��������������������������������������� to ������������������������������ socialist society,” and to serve the state. As Jean Charbonnier puts it, the official atheistic ideology ���������������� ������� of the Chinese government is to “transform gradually religious teachings into an active service of social development.”30 Clergy are obliged to exercise political loyalty.31 In this way, “the principle of adaptation undermines freedom of religious belief by insisting that any principles and doctrines of the five recognized religions that

25 Human Rights Watch/Asia, China: State Control of Religion (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1997),��� 8. �� 26 Jean Charbonnier, “The Underground Church,” in Edmond Tang and Jean-Paul Wiest (eds), The Catholic Church in Modern China: Perspectives (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993)��������������������������������������������������� ,�������������������������������������������������� 52–70�������������������������������������������� .������������������������������������������� See also Jonathan Chao and Rosanna Chong, A History of Christianity in Socialist China, 1949–1997 (Taipei: CMI, 1997),������ 719. ����� 27 See Fuk-tsang Ying, “�������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������� Church�������������������������������������������������� –������������������������������������������������� State Relationship in Contemporary China and i��� ���� ts Impact on the Development of Christianity,��”� Studies in New Century Religion 2/2 (2004)��,� 110����� –���� 73. 28 See Fuk-tsang Ying, Church�������������������������������������� –������������������������������������� State Relations in Contemporary China (����������� Hong Kong: Christianity and Chinese Culture Research Center, 1999), 74��� –�� 5. 29 I������������ bid., 72���� –��� 3. 30 Charbonnier, “The Underground Church,” 57. 31 It has been thought that ������������������������������������������������������� in some periods ��������������������������������������� some senior pastors were party members sent to work inside the churc��������������������������������������� h�������������������������������������� .������������������������������������� See �������������������������������� Alan Hunter and Kim-Kwong Chan, Protestantism in Contemporary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 60.



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85

do not conform to socialism should be changed.”32 It may be called a sort of “political indoctrination.” On the religious side, when government-sponsored ������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������� religious organizations and their leaders exercise regulation of religious activities,�������������������������� some of them������������� ������������ may have to� make some moral compromises in incorporating ��������������������������������� certain political ������������������������� accommodations into their religious views. Above all, they are required to conduct religious worship in the designated places and time. In �������������������������������������������� public and political life, t������������� hey have the responsibility to develop a proper patriotic outlook and embrace official attitudes out of political necessity.33 In this sense they are not “naturally inclined toward expressing an independent voice or being a counterwitness in society.”34 In contemporary China, some political bodies (for instance, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference������������������������������������������� , either at the national or the provincial level���������������������������������������������������������������������������� ) do include a certain number of religious leaders from patriotic religious associations who are allowed to express their opinions��������������������������� ����������������������������������� on public policies�������� ������� and to offer suggestions on social issues. However, some observers have questioned both ����� the interpretation and the expressions of religious ideas that these representatives make (if they do so) and even their identity�������������������������������������� as ���������������������������������� authentic religious��������������� believer������ s����� and leaders����������������������������������������������������������������� —���������������������������������������������������������������� in the sense of voicing ������������������������������������������������ the true feelings of�������������������� religious circles��. 6.2

Religious Communities����������������������� outside the Mainstream

The state’s limited tolerance of religion is further man�������������������������� ifeste�������������������� d in its ����������� management of religious communities�������������������������������������������������������� outside the mainstream �������������������������������� (������������������������������� the official management system of religious affairs���������������������������������������������������������� ), namely, unregistered and unauthorized religious groups outside of the five officially recognized religions and the state-sanctioned religious organizations. These groups mainly include the unofficial churches, both Catholic and Protestant, “feudal superstitions” connected with popular religion���������� , and new religious����������� movements�.35 There are also some������������������������������� new mosques and temples being built with the help of funds from outside the country���������������� . �������������� The government fears that� religious organizations and����������������������������������������������������� believers outside ���������������������������������� the structure of state-sanctioned� religious organizations—and thus outside the state’s supervision���������������� ��������������������������� —��������������� would endanger social and political stability. Thus, the government sees these unofficial groups as a potential challenge to its authority, and restrains ��������������������������������� them ����������������������� from time to time. According to some observation��������������������������������������� s�������������������������������������� , ������������������������������������ however, although there may be some exceptions, many �������������������������������������������������������������� unregistered groups gather peacefully�������������������� for the reasons of 32

Human Rights Watch/Asia, China: State Control of Religion, p. ����� 8. �� See Deborah A. Brown, “The Role of Religion in Promoting Democracy in the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong,” in Beatrice Leung (ed.), Church and State Relations in 21st Century Asia, ������� 79����� –���� 141�. 34 Ibid., 88. 35 It is estimated that there are more than 30 million Christians who are members of� unofficial Christian groups (even though this number is still controversial)��������������� . In addition, there are millions of followers of folk religions. 33

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geograph���������������������������������������������������������������������� ical convenience������������������������������������������������������ or��������������������������������������������������� the����������������������������������������������� personal spiritual need of ������������������� their members that stem from disagreements with the religious doctrine and liturgy promoted by official religious organizations rather than with official politics. Under ����������� most circumstances, t���������������������������������������������������������������� hey do not “criticize government policy in general, most try to live as good citizens and yet wish to enjoy real religious freedom.”36 They do not “preach active resistance against government except on matters that concern secular interference in theology and religious practices.”37 ���������������������� For instance, as Paul Freston points out, “house ������������������������������������������������������������ churches are closer to indigenous religiosity … tend to an apolitical stance influenced by dispensationalist theology, but are obligated to operate semi-clandestinely, unwillingly becoming political deviants.”38 For the most part, thes���������������������������������������������������� e unofficial���������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������� groups��������������������������������� are not a real threat to public order or political leadership, and as I will argue in the next chapter������������������ , ���������������� it is desirable that �������������������������������������������������������������������������� religious groups in general should���������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������� be re���������������������������������� ������������������������������������ strained ������������������������� from��������������������� any attempt to gain political power and dominance. It is to be hoped that there will be a����������� change of official attitude ������������������������������������������������������������������������� to these ������������������������������������������������������� religious���������������������������������������������� groups and ���������������������������������� a��������������������������������� modification of the restrictive ������������ registration policy��. Even though these religious groups are not yet ���������������������������������� recognized ������������������������������ in ������������������� the legal sense and are often ������������������������������������������������������������������� repressed���������������������������������������������������������� —compared to official religious organizations������������� ������������ which stand on the government’s side—they do seem to preserve������������������������������ their ����������������������������� own religious identity and human integrity better than the official groupings. “These [unofficial] groups seem to be sanctuaries in which individuals pursue beliefs in harmony with their individual consciences, rather than places where religious persons organize to become a dominant moral force in society or to plan widespread political opposition the state.”39 Alan Hunter and Kim-Kwong Chan describe the Protestant house churches in China as autonomous Christian communities in the sense that they embody uncompromising spiritual dissent from a prevailing orthodoxy.40 “Unofficial groups are freer than open churches to follow practices in keeping with their own visions of reality, although they are more frequently subjected to repression by suspicious secular authorities.”41 Certainly these unofficial religious groups—the so-called “autonomous religious communities”—are excluded from participating in any political process. It is expected that t��������������������������������������� hese groups will����������������������� ��������������������������� be taken increasingly ������������� seriously������������������������������������������������������������������������ —����������������������������������������������������������������������� and ������������������������������������������������������������������� will be increasingly ���������������������������������������������� tolerated������������������������������������� —������������������������������������ by the government������������������� ,������������������ and ������������� will finally �������� gain legal status������������� in society��.

36

Charbonnier, “The Underground Church,”���� 65. ��� Brown, “The Role of Religion in Promoting Democracy in the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong,”���� ��� 98. 38 Paul Freston��,� Evangelicals and Politics in Asia, Africa and Latin America (��������������������������������������������������� Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001�������� ), 104. 39 Brown, “The Role of Religion in Promoting Democracy,”����� 98. ���� 40 See Hunter and Chan, 81–3. 41 Brown,��������������������������������������������������� “The Role of Religion in Promoting Democracy,”���� �������������������������������������������������� 97. ��� 37



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6.�������������������������������������������������� 3 The L������������������������������������������� imited Role of Religion in����������������� the Public Realm In 1982, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party issued Document 19, which laid out its basic viewpoints and policy on the ��������������� problem of religion���������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������� under communism������������������������������������������������������ in China. The document������������������������������� states: “Religion will not be permitted to meddle in the administrative or the juridical affairs of the state, nor to intervene in the schools or public education.”42 Article 36 of the Constitution also emphasizes that the religious are not allowed to disrupt public order or to impair the health of citizens. It is evident that religion’s influence on the public sphere, such as political life, the arenas of economic������������������������������������������������������� s������������������������������������������������������ , education, science,��������������������������������� ����������������������������������������� and the mass media, is strictly restricted and even prohibited in present-day China. The religious voice is muted there. Deborah A. Brown writes that in China “the idea of religion as an autonomous ethical force that can resist state policy or directly influence the development of society is an anathema.”43 Even ������������������������������ though some moral values derived from religious resources in sustaining social life have been gradually recognized, t���������������������������������������������������������� he Chinese government does not, in my view, attach enough importance to religion’s potential contribution to the public good, and its regulation of religious activities does not allow religion to serve as a counterweight against the state in matters concerning law, public policy, and citizens’ well-being. “While quasi-separation of church and state is official policy, the concept of religious institutions eliciting an allegiance among believers that can evolve into an autonomous power base, capable of molding public opinion and influencing governmental behavior, is subversive.”44 The “normal religious activities” permitted by the government are restricted to the religious practices held within officially supervised religious sites, which do not include broadly political activity by those taking part. Chinese government policy does give certain religious leaders from the state-approved religious organizations a legitimate yet limited voice to participate in the political process. However, its purpose is to unite religious believers in support of the state’s goals������������ and social stability��������������������������������������������������������������������������� , ������������������������������������������������������������������������� so ���������������������������������������������������������������������� the interpretations of religious doctrine����������������������������� by these representatives ��� of the official organizations,������������������������������������������������������ and whether they ������������������������������������ give expression to������������������ a real religious� ���������� voice in political life����������������������� , are both in question.

42

See the English translation of Document 19 in Donald E. MacInnis, Religion in China: Policy and Practice (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989), 15. 43 Brown,������������������������������������������������������������������� “The ������������������������������������������������������������������ Role of Religion in Promoting Democracy,”�������������������� 84. ������������������� Kim-kwong ��������������� Chan also notes the ban on promoting religion in public in China, saying������������������� :������������������ ����������������� “With some brief exceptions, the Chinese authorities have been mostly nonreligious, ruling over various religious groups without allowing any of them to become a predominant group or influential political force”��������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������� (������������������������������������������������������� Kim-kwong Chan, ��������������������������������������� “Religion in China in the Twenty-first Century: Some Scenarios��� ,��” Religion, State and Society 33/2 (2005),���������� 87������� –������ 119��� )��. 44 Brown,���������������������������������������������������� “The Role of Religion in Promoting Democracy,”����� ��������������������������������������������������� 84. ����

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Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China A principal strategy for controlling religious influence is to force religion from the public sphere and to make religious practice a “private matter.” Because religion officially can be practiced only at state-approved, registered sites, and because the propagation of theism is forbidden, the spread of religious values in the public sector is frustrated.45

Here ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� Brown’s points help us to understand how the Chinese government interprets the issue of religious freedom. As Document 19 states, “the crux of the policy of freedom of religious belief is to make the question of religious belief a private matter, one of individual free choice for citizens.”46 General speaking, one basic point ������������������������������������������������������������������������ in Chinese ��������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������� religious policy is �������������������������������������� that freedom of religion is simply the freedom of private belief and religious belief is only an individual act. The level of freedom of religious activities in the community as well as in the public��, particularly that ������������������������������������������������������������� of������������������������������������������������������ spontaneous������������������������������������������ ����������������������������������������������������� communal religious worship,�������������� has not been widely accepted. “They distinguish between personal worship and participation in organized religious activities. It is the latter that they go to great lengths to control, not the former.”47 The present government’s claim that it separates religion and politics is questionable. As I have shown in Part I, the religion–state separation doctrine in some Western societies aims to protect full rights to religious practice both at the individual and communal level. It does not necessarily exclude� the������������������������������������������������������������������������ engagement������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������ in public life—including the political process—������������� by����������� religious groups����������������������������������������������������������������������� alongside nonreligious ones. ����������������������������������������������� Rather, the meaning of religious freedom includes, at least to some extent, religious participation in the public sphere. However, the Chinese government’s religious policy attempts to exclude religious involvement and engagement in public�������������������������������������������� and���������������������������������������� political life by means of the state’s control��������������������������������������������������������������������������� over and restriction of��������������������������������������������������� religious activities through secular authorities. In contemporary China, religious activities cannot in fact be separated from the state’s supervision������������������������������������������������������������ and ������������������������������������������������������� management, and for this reason the right to religious practice is restricted. Thus, the Chinese government simply aims to keep religion away from the “political,” and “any monastic political activities are viewed as subversive.”48 The government’s intention to restrict�������������������������������������������� religious ������������������������������������������� belief to a “private matter” and to remove ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� religion ������������������������������������������������������������������������ from public influence should be distinguished from the liberal privatization of religion or restraint on religion in public life in a modern liberal democracy. Rorty’s advocacy of privatization of religion is motivated by the fact of the conflict and conversation difficulty between the religious and the nonreligious in the public sphere. Its purpose is to protect religious liberty and to preserve a 45

Brown, “The Role of Religion in Promoting Democracy,”���� 86. ��� See MacInnis, 15. 47 Human Right Watch/Asia, China: State Control of Religion,���� ��� 2. 48 David C. Yu, Religion in Postwar China: a Critical Analysis and Annotated Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994),��� 6. �� 46



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democratic political community. Rawls and Audi’s liberal restraints on religion in politics also show adequate respect to nonreligious people and communities, and follow the principle of freedom and equality of citizens. They also take it as a condition for guaranteeing full religious liberty. By way of contrast, in contemporary China, restraint on and prohibition of religious values and����������������������������������������������������������������� religious������������������������������������������������������� activities in the public ������������������������������������ and ������������������������� political realm���������� ,��������� for the sake of the state’s political purpose�������������� s,������������ weakens the freedom of religious belief and practice. This sort of����������������������������������������������������������������� exclusion������������������������������������������������������� is not motivated by privatization or restraint as the liberal scholars propose, but by the��������������������������������������������������� state’s �������������������������������������������������� control of religion, including religion’s public expression and influence in politics, given its potential to challenge state power. The ���������������������������������������������������������������������� government tends to����������������������������������������������� “fear both an active involvement by religious believers in politics, and a longer-term ideological threat to Marxism.”49 T������������������������������������������������������������������������������ he state’s restraint on religion’��������������������������������������������� s�������������������������������������������� public influence in China, and its attempt to reduce religious belief to a private matter, do ����������������������������������� not fulfill �������������������� the full ���������������� meaning ����������� of freedom of religious practice in three senses. First, as noted in Part I, religion has both private and public qualities, which include its inevitable involvement in public life, including political matters. Second, the concept of religious freedom contains not only private belief in terms of freedom of conscience but also religious expression and practice in community.50 Third, the Chinese interpretation and policy of religious practice�������������� ������������� do����������� not fully keep up�������������������������������������������������������������������������� with��������������������������������������������������������������������� the much more broadly defined international standard���������������� s��������������� , which accent ������� public and communal religious activities.51 From the following statements regarding religion from some international declarations, one may clearly see what should�������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������� be reinforced in advancing religious� ���������� practice in China. Article ����������������������������������������������������������������� 18 of United Nations International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (1966) addresses the meaning of religious freedom as follows: Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

Article 6 of United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief (1981) also declares the following freedoms relating to religious practice: to worship or assemble in connection with a religion or belief, and to establish and maintain places for these purposes, to establish and maintain appropriate charitable or humanitarian institutions, and to establish and maintain communications with individuals and communities in matters of religion and belief at the national and international levels, and so on. 49

Hunter and Chan, Protestantism in Contemporary China, 57 See Human Right Watch/Asia, China: State Control of Religion,������ 2–3. ����� 51 Ibid., 3.

50

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Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China

It is obvious that there exists a gap between the��������������������������� se������������������������� international standards on the protection of religious freedom and the actual situation of religious� ���������� practice in China ���������������������������������������������������������������� in the���������������������������������������������������������� manifestations of ��������������������������������������� religion������������������������������� s������������������������������ and�������������������������� beliefs������������������ that are allowed there������������������������������������������������������������������������ . Furthermore, ��������������������������������������������������������� these international declarations are more concerned with “traditional, limited notions of religious worship” than “an expanded role for religion in the social or political realm”.52 It seems����������������������������� hard������������������������ to conclude from these declarations that manifestations of a religion may contain religious political engagement. However, the protection of “thought, conscience and religion” in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights implies “a space for developing political ideas”, so “while the intermingling of politics with religion may take issues outside the realm of religious freedom in the strict sense, this does not mean that international human rights law permits repression of politico-religious organizations or individuals.”53 This is why we have to take into account the issue of religion in the public and political domain when we talk about freedom of religion. As Carolyn Evans reminds us, “����������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������ China has claimed that it recognizes the value of religious����������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������� freedom and that it adheres������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������� to its international obligations to treat all people equally regardless of religion or belief. Its own record, however, shows that the Chinese government still has a long way to go before its rhetoric matches the reality.� ”54

52

Carolyn Evans, “Chinese Law and the International Protection of Religious Freedom,” Journal of Church and State 44/4 (2002),��������� 749����� –���� 74. 53 Ibid., 769. 54 Ibid., 774� ����.

PArT III The Appropriate Role of Religion in Public Political Culture in a Democratic China: A Proposal

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Chapter 7

Religious Liberty and the ���������������� Public Role of Religion The descriptive analysis of the characteristics of religion and its political context in China in Part II provides us with a background for considering the model of religion in public political culture in a democratic China. The nature of the potentially positive participation of religion in politics has not been widely understood and accepted in China due to the limitations imposed by the state and its religious policy. When we talk about religion taking a role in public political culture in China, we usually presuppose the context of democratic politics, which is yet to come into being. Although the present government claims that it follows a democratic model with Chinese communist characteristics, this model would need to be transformed in terms of the participation of religious voices in public and political life. Despite China’s present political conditions, I will propose some normative considerations on the issue of religion in public life under democratic politics. The political reform toward democratization in China not only expresses the strong desire of the people and a variety of organizations in society, but����������������� also������������ is to some extent a requirement for the continuation of the country’s current economic and social development. However, I will not explore the question of what particular model of democracy would be suitable to a democratic China. Rather, given my concern with religion in democratic politics, I will focus on the core institutions of democracy, which might be commonly included in any possible model that will emerge in China. 

There are some proposed models of democracy in China. For example, Baogang He proposes three possible models: the radical model of populist democracy, the official model of paternalistic democracy, and the liberal model of democracy. See Baogang He, The Democratization of China (London and New York: Routledge, 1996). According to John S. Dryzek, Leslie Templeman Holmes and Yali Peng’s analysis, there are four prominent models proposed for China’s political culture: “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” liberal democracy, East Asian developmental corporatism, and social democracy. See John S. Dryzek and Leslie Templeman Holmes, Post-Communist Democratization: Political Discourse across Thirteen Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), especially the “China” section at 52–6. Another proposal, “communitarian democracy,” is made by David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames. See David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, The Democracy of the Dead: Dewey, Confucius, and the Hope for Democracy in China (Chicago and Lasalle, IL: Open Court, 1999).

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In general, despite various democratic models, one basic element of a democratic political culture is that a democratic government shall affirm citizens’ participation in the process of government. “The virtue of society is built from the bottom up, not mandated from the top down. And it is built by citizens who take responsibility for their lives and for the well-being of society through active participation in public life.” In this deliberative process, “various possible options for action are proposed, discussed, and their strength and weakness evaluated.” This process will allow the involvement of secular as well as religious arguments, on the one hand, and the participation of religious citizens along with other citizens, on the other. To ensure an appropriate role for religion in Chinese democratic political culture, the following are necessary conditions: first, there must be free religious practice by religious individuals and associations; second, under guarantee of the full right to religious liberty, we may expect the continuing existence and even widening of religious diversity in Chinese society; third, there will be increasing affirmation of value pluralism instead of one particular dominant doctrine, as well as a certain space for religious or nonreligious citizens to express themselves on public and political affairs based on their religious or philosophical beliefs. To explore the role of religion in public political culture in a democratic China, I will consider it from two interrelated aspects. First, I will discuss how to achieve full religious liberty and a shift in the religion–state relationship, including government’s treatment of religion, and how to make it possible to discuss religious involvement in political life in China. I will then study some particular principles, particular religious groups, and a special case involving religion’s role in politics. I will take into account the characteristics of religion, especially the fact of religious diversity and its political context in China described in Part II. I will also draw on the theoretical resources outlined in Part I, particularly concerning the relationship between religious freedom and religious expression in public life, as well as between religious diversity and religious involvement in public political culture. 7.1

Beyond Religious Liberty

To explore religious involvement in public political culture in a democratic China, it is necessary first to understand the issue of religious liberty, including its meaning and its realization.  See Suzanne Ogden’s summary about the ��������������������������������������������� features of ����������������������������� democratic political culture in his Inklings of Democracy in China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002),� 99.  Hollenbach, “Freedom and Truth: Religious Liberty as Immunity and Empowerment,” 143.  Raymond Geuss, History and Illusion in Politics (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 113–14.



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In looking at the religious situation in China, I will assume that the achievement of religious liberty must involve two levels: a “negative immunity” and a “positive empowerment,” to use Hollenbach’s terminology. I have noted that the Chinese government’s attitude to religion, and its religious policy, tend to apply only to the level of individual private belief, which constrains both associational and public activities, including political expression and participation by religious believers. Due to the current restrictions on religious practice in China, one may be more concerned with the negative side of religious liberty, namely, how to give more freedom to religious belief, worship, rites and rituals. However, this is not sufficient. In order to achieve full religious freedom in a democratic China, the aspect of religious involvement in public life, especially in public political culture, should also be included. Furthermore, according to Hollenbach, “The right to immunity from coercion remains as an essential precondition for the existence of the empowerment. A community of discourse can only be such when it is immune from coercion.” To grant and protect the full right to religious exercise—to both individual and association—without interference or coercion from government or others, would create a certain room for religion’s public expression and participation as an autonomous force. In view of the special features of the religious situation in China, the realization of free religious exercise ought to cover��������������������� both �������������������� individual and associational or communal exercise, and both religious belief and religious practice. As Murray emphasizes, “religious freedom is immunity from coercion in what concerns religious worship, observance, practice, and witness—in all cases, both private and familiar and also public and social.” To understand the immunity aspect of religious freedom, I would refer to the interpretation of “liberty dimensions and entitlement dimension of religious human rights” introduced by John Witte. The liberty dimension requires the state or other groups’ noninterference with and noncoercion of the beliefs and actions of religious individuals and institutions, and this entails “�������������������������� freedom of conscience for the individual and freedom of association for religious groups������������������� .” The entitlement dimension means individuals’ free private religious exercise and groups’ free engagement in collective worship. From a broader perspective, the immunity of religious practice from interference and coercion by the state or others cannot be detached from freedom of thought, expression, and association in a liberal society. Fundamentally, these freedoms are concerned with “man’s right to freedom from restraint



Hollenbach, “Freedom and Truth,” 147. John Courtney Murray, Freedom and Man (New York: P.J. Kennedy, 1965), 135.  See John Witte, “Introduction�������������������������������������������������� ,������������������������������������������������� ”������������������������������������������������ in��������������������������������������������� John Witte and Johan D. van der Vyver (eds�� ), Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective: Religious Perspectives (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1996), xvii������ ���������� –����� xxxv�. 

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or impediment in acting according to his conscience.” In Murray’s words, understanding freedom of conscience should be based on “the dignity of the person.” Such dignity is “the first truth of the social order—the order in which rights are affirmed and exercised. The dignity of the person is a basic constituent element of the objective moral order, the order on which society itself and its laws and processes must be based.” This affirmation of freedom of conscience is a foundation for the right to religious belief and practice that reflects one’s deep personal beliefs regarding the meaning of life and the conception of the highest good.10 In Chinese society, with reference to religion’s political context as studied in Part II, this immunity aspect of religious freedom mainly involves religious practice by religious organizations—that is, organizations’ immunity from the state’s control and management. Religious individuals and groups should be entitled to engage peaceably in religious worship and related activities in any form. Their religious exercise should not be subject to governmental restrictions��, provided they do not act��������������������������������� ������������������������������������ against the laws of the country. According to my analysis in Part II, this sort of independence in China should contain at least two parts: ��������������������������������������������� one is �������������������������������������� the independence of national official religious associations from the state’s supervision and restraint, and ���������� the other the acknowledgment of the legal status of religious sects and groups (including unofficial ones) by the government. As Fulton points out, most religious communities in China “desire greater autonomy and freedom of religious practice.” 11 As the “immunity” aspect of religious liberty in China, this achievement of free religious practice and religious autonomy is a necessity if religions are to further engage in public life. When I talk about the free religious exercise by religious individuals and organizations without the state’s or others’ intrusion, I mainly have in mind their involvement in religious belief, worship, rites and rituals. That this limited sense of religious conduct should be guaranteed seems to be widely acknowledged. The real problem is how far beyond those specifically religious activities freedom of religious conduct should extend. Within and without communities of faith, some emphasize freedom of private individual religious belief and collective religious worship while insisting that religion’s public expression and participation should be restrained or prohibited, with due respect for nonreligious fellow citizens or those of other religious beliefs. On the other hand, for some religious believers, religious exercise does not simply contain religious activities confined to individual or collective religious 

Murray, 137. Ibid., 138. 10 Refer to Rawls’s “principle of rights” by virtue of liberty of conscience. 11 Brent Fulton, “Freedom of Religion in China: The Emerging Civic Discourse,” in Randy Kluver and John H. Powers (eds), Civic Discourse, Civil Society, and Chinese Communities (Stamford, C����������������������� T���������������������� : Ablex, 1999), 53���� ������ –��� 66�. 



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exercise; they feel that expression and argument based on religious conviction should be presented in public and political matters. For them, political expression arising out of religious doctrines is viewed as one form of the free exercise of religion. “Religious truth claims should not be excluded from public discourse. Religious freedom means believers have as much right to make their case regarding public affairs as do those who make political claims based on non-religious grounds.”12 As I discussed earlier in Part I, separation of church and state, which aims to give a free hand to religious exercise, does not necessarily imply the exclusion of religion from state affairs. As James ���������������������������������������������� Wood ���������������������������������������� puts it, “separation of church and state or institutional independence between church and state must not mean the churches leave the state to itself and its national interests, or ignore the state’s claim of final authority or absolute sovereignty over human affairs.”13 To consider the issues of religious liberty, including the religion–state relationship and religious involvement in public life in the Chinese context, it is worth pointing out that there has been some tension between restrictions on religious involvement in the public sphere and the religious demand for the legitimization of social and political activity. In a democratic China, when the right to private religious belief and collective religious worship is attained and fully protected through the state’s noninterference with religious matters, an inevitable issue will be the relevance of religious values, religious individuals and groups to public and political life. Arthur Waldron claims������������������������������� that in China����������������� , “religion will play a role in the growing debate about values and morality … the independent role of religion there will almost certainly grow in strength and significance in the years ahead.”14 From this perspective, on the issue of religious exercise in a democratic China, I would argue that it should not be confined to����������������� the ���������������� traditional ������������ limited sense of�������������������������������������������������������������������� religious worship alone. Instead, religious involvement in Chinese political life should be included, although the extent and means of participation need further study. Given this affirmation of the public dimension and concern of religion and its relevance to political life for believers, the achievement of religious freedom in China will contain not only free religious belief and practice but also religious engagement in public and political affairs to some extent. Starting from this point, in search of the role of religion in Chinese political culture, I will first consider some relevant factors: the force of religion and its public claim; the affirmation of the moral role of religion and its relevance to the promotion of religious rights; and the independence of religious groupings as autonomous forces. Besides struggling for more freedom������������������������������������� of���������������������������������� ������������������������������������ religious exercise��������������� without state interference, religious citizens and communities in China are concerned with 12

Hollenbach, “Freedom and Truth,”����� 147. ���� Wood, “Public Religion Vis-à-vis the Prophetic Role of Religion,”����� 50. ���� 14 Arthur Waldron, ����������������������������������������� “Religious Revivals in Communist China,” Orbis 42/2 ������������� (1998), 325–34��. 13

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social participation and moral claims in the public arena. “Religious groups are very interested in how to enlarge their resources for self-support and how to gain more opportunities to participate in social services and welfare.”15 Furthermore, some religious groups may disagree with governmental policies, but they do not have a public arena in which to express their dissent or to be involved in the policy discourse. For example, many Catholics in China do not agree with the government’s policies on marriage, divorce, and abortion, and are not satisfied with the Catholic Patriotic Associations’ simple acceptance of government directives on these matters.16 The call for free religious practice and involvement in social and political issues can be seen as one kind of religious impulse in Chinese society. In China, the force of religiosity and religious diversity cannot be ignored; markers of this include the great number of religious believers, the variety of religious communities, their moral claims, and their concern for public affairs and desire to express views on political issues based on their religious convictions. These factors reflect the rich ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� religious resource����������������������������������������������������������� s ��������������������������������������������������������� of the country, and demonstrates the desire of religious believers for a stronger public role. In terms of the character and diversity of religion in Chinese society, seeking a public role for religion in China is, in my view, a way of activating the potential of these religious resources in both moral and political spheres. My main concern here is to discuss the public role of religion within Chinese society and its relevance to the issue of religious liberty in that country. Generally speaking, religion there has traditionally played more of a moral role, which is considered more acceptable than a political role, although this moral role is still limited. The first step is to move from the endorsement of religious moral values to the progress of religious liberty. In China, religious values function as a moral resource in society all the time, even if in an “invisible” way. The moral role of religion and its concern for public expression in Chinese society deserve respect and the expansion of rights to religious exercise.17 In the following I will offer some general considerations on the moral role of religion in Chinese society. According to C.K. Yang’s analysis in Religion in Chinese Society, religion, while performing the traditional role of supernatural sanctioning agent, also functions as part of the traditional moral order of Chinese society. But, in comparison with the dominance of the Confucian ethical system in traditional Chinese conceptions of morality, “the chief moral role of religion lay not in its

15

50.

16

Peng Liu, “Church and State Relations in China: Characteristics and Trends,”

See Boyle and Sheen, Freedom of Religion and Belief, 184. At this point I agree with the idea that a major reason for supporting the right to free religious practice lies in the moral importance of religion (see Chapter 4, section 4.1). 17



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being a premise of ethical values, but in its assistance in the enforcement of the secular moral standards.”18 C.K. Yang points out that the two major institutional religions in China, Buddhism and Taoism, did not develop sufficiently comprehensive and systematic ethical systems (compared with Confucianism) to be effective in secular moral life. In other words, they did not “occupy the status of a dominant, independent moral institution.”19 As a means of both encouragement and deterrence, they supply sanction for Confucian values so as to strengthen the ethico-political order. They also serve as “magic” for the common people. In this sense, “Religion and ethics … belong to two separate aspects of the institutional structure of traditional Chinese society, although the two functioned together, with the ethics of the Confucian doctrine and the secular institutions deriving its sacred and awe-inspiring quality from religion.”20 However, this relative separation of religion and ethics, and religion’s weakness as a source of ethical values, ought not to rule out religious support of the moral order, since “religion helped uphold moral values which the social institutions, using secular means alone, would not have been able to maintain.”21 These basic points on the relation of religion to moral order in traditional Chinese society carry certain implications for understanding the moral problems of contemporary China. As we have seen, from the 1960s to the late 1970s there was continuous suppression������������������������������������������������������ s����������������������������������������������������� of religious activities. It is hard to measure what effect this severe attack on religions and religious people had. T��������������� his period t��� he discrimination, assault, and suppression may also have shaken the religious and moral convictions of many believers. The originally limited traditional moral role of religion was weakened still further during and after the Cultural Revolution. Since the government reaffirmed the freedom of religious belief in the 1980s, there has been a certain religious revival and growth in China. This revival demonstrates many people’s strong longing for the supernatural comfort under conditions both of radical social change and of a monolithic system of moral education. Against this background I would like to discuss five aspects regarding the moral function that religion may fulfill in China in the long term. 1 �������������������������������������������������������������������������� According to C.K. Yang, Buddhism and Taoism do not have an ethical system comparable to that of Confucianism. Moreover, the Chinese state often regarded Buddhist and Taoist sects as heterodox with respect to Confucian ethics (the moral orthodoxy of Chinese society), except for those components that were adopted by Confucianism. In contemporary Chinese society, Marxism has replaced Confucianism as the purveyor of moral orthodoxy, and the traditional morally sanctioning role of Buddhism and Taoism seems 18 19 20 21

C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society, 286. Ibid., 278. Ibid., 291. Ibid., 290.

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much weaker. But because the latter two have become widespread among both the Han Chinese and several ethnic minorities in China, we should pay certain attention to their effect on the moral life of these communities. 2 I������������������������������������������������������������������������ t has been observed that Chinese peasants’ lives are influenced more by customs and religious heritage than by communist moral principles. In addition, “religious traditions have been better preserved in the rural areas than in the cities.”22 Traditional popular religious beliefs have begun to flourish again in villages in recent years. Even though peasants have experienced great changes in their lifestyle���������������������������������������������������������������������� since the 1980s������������������������������������������������������ , their moral order is still largely sustained by the traditional values of both Confucian ethical norms and religious convictions. The wide rural areas allow more room for strengthening the moral function of religion than urban areas, where atheistic views prevail. The moral life of China’s peasants will be, relatively speaking, a separate issue from that of the urban population when discussing religion’s contribution to public life in China. 3 I��������������������������������������������������������������������������� n China ethnic minorities tend to have particular religious identities and characteristics. We have seen earlier the importance of religion in their lives. The mixture of ethnicity, culture, and religion makes the entire system of religious beliefs a central moral force among these peoples. In addition, in some religions of these ethnic minorities the governmental special treatment of these religions may help to preserve their religious practices and their moral place in these ethnic minorities’ culture.23 Even today, we should not underestimate the great cultural and moral influence of these religions among these peoples. 4 I����������������������������������������������������������������������������� f we assume that C.K. Yang is correct in his assessment of the supplementary moral role of Chinese religions or the traditional separation of ethics and religion in Chinese history, we may turn to Christianity as a religion that synthesizes an ethical system with the worship of the supernatural. Zhuo Xinping, a Chinese religious scholar, claims that Christianity, with its clear moral orientation, plays a leading role in promoting moral development in China.24 In ����������������������������������������������������������� the chang�������������������������������������������������� ing����������������������������������������������� social and political conditions��������������� of the 1990s, Christianity has become a focus of interest in Chinese society, especially among intellectuals, such as college students, and the number of Christians has been growing rapidly. Academic Christian studies are also gradually flourishing, including the translation of Western academic works as well as independent local research. It might be said that this will make a difference to the moral life of the Chinese, in one way or another, through the spread of Christian morality in their society. An adage has arisen—“one more Christian, one more 22

Pas, “The Post-Deng Era and the Future of Religion in China,”����� ���� 320. For instance, “Because ill-treatment of Muslims during the Cultural Revolution brought strong criticism from Muslim states, the Chinese government has been less harsh on them than it has been on other reglious groups.” (Boyle and Sheen,� Freedom of Religion and Belief, 183). 24 Xinping Zhuo, “Religion and Morality in Contemporary China,” China Study Journal 14/3 (1999), 5 –9. 23



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good citizen”—and it is widely endorsed not only by religious bodies but also ����� by the government and officials.25 5 A������������������������������������������������������������������������������� s a long-term program, religious associations (mainly from the five officially recognized religions) conduct all kinds of social work beneficial to society in various spheres, such as education, health care, and aid for the poor and people in difficulties. Their voluntary service to society may be seen as a practical expression of their religious moral commandments, such as love and compassion. Although they may not have any missionary purpose�������������� in the field of social work, we �������������������������������������������������������������� may still ������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������� expect that their moral practice, based on their religious convictions, will gradually facilitate a wider influence of religious morality in society through their work������������� and service�. In terms of various religions themselves, their local features and religious practices, this moral role of religion in Chinese society seems to be accepted, even by the state, which considers religion helpful in the moral life of both������������� individuals� ������������ and commun������������������������������������������������������������������� ities. It is likely that the recognition and encouragement of this moral role will to some extent promote religious liberty. But in a more developed democratic China, this moral role will no longer be an instrument to fulfill the state’s political purposes. Religion will instead become a�������������������� n independent������� moral resource���������������������������������������������������������������������� alongside others����������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������� in�������������������������������������������������� the���������������������������������������������� public life���������������������������������� of a democratic pluralist society. This affirmation of the moral importance of religion, by advancing the full realization of religious liberty, will then ��������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������� facilitate religion’s political participation in a democratic China. Stiltner insists that liberal institutions are compatible with the vital role of religion in liberal society: “liberal theory can not only tolerate a strong role for religious believers and institutions, but can affirm this as beneficial to the very good of liberal society.”26 It is hoped that greater religious liberty will allow more room for religious expression in the public sphere, especially in public political culture. The freedom to engage in religious practices will no longer be confined to “normal religious activities” alone, as the Chinese government now requires. As I mentioned earlier, another aspect of religion’s moral contribution is that certain values derived from religious beliefs may enter public political culture and affect decision-making on political issues, especially those with a moral dimension. Therefore, alongside the improvement of religious liberty, the issue of religious involvement in political life will arise in China, against a background of religious diversity. To achieve full freedom of religious exercise, including engagement in politics in China, one important element is the independence of religion from the state. It is only in a situation of governmental noninterference that religion can become an independent moral force, expressing religious perspectives and 25 “It is reported that many of the good and selfless nurses in Chinese hospitals are secret Christians” (Arthur Waldron������������������������������������������������ ,����������������������������������������������� “Religious Revivals in Communist China,” 328)�. 26 Stiltner, Religion and the Common Good, 4.

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engaging more freely in the public domain. This sort of independence of religion aims to transform the historical and current religion–state model in China—one of alliance with the state or struggle against the state’s control—so as to make it possible for religion to become an autonomous force capable of effective involvement in public and political affairs. In the Chinese context, to understand the independence of religion, and religion as an autonomous force in public affairs,���������������������������������� ��������������������������������� requires some distinctions to be made. A�������������������������������������������������������������������������� s I argue later, religion’������������������������������������������������ ��������������������������������������������������������� s contribution as an ������������������������������ autonomous ��������������������������� force to public� ������� life ������������������������������������������������� should be distinguished from��������������������� political rebellion�. But��������������������������� �������������������������� it is worth emphasizing a crucial difference in characteristics between support of governmental policies and dissent from those policies by religious groups. ���������������������������������� As James Wood sees���������������� it������������� , r���������� eligion’s obedience to the state is a condition for being tolerated in an authoritarian state, whereas the right of dissent would be denied by such a state, and deemed inappropriate and unpatriotic.27 In a democratic China, religion’s significant contribution to public life goes beyond that. “The public church in its work and witness must … take responsibility for its actions and decisions in public affairs.”28 Religious believers and communities express their views on social and political issues from their religious convictions, either in support of or in disagreement with governmental policies. On some occasions, they may oppose acts of government and protest those policies. In providing moral and intellectual resources, their specific religious understandings may influence government to deliberate on these issues and to make relevant law and public policy. In this way, religion can benefit the common good of a society. Besides religion’s right of protest against governmental policies, its influence in public life requires both independence from state support and the state’s sympathetic treatment of religious matters. According to��������������������� �������������������� Wood, there are two circumstances in which public religion is irreconcilable with the secular state: one is when the state is committed to an officially atheist policy, in which it denies������ “the reality of the nonphysical world and is hostile to all forms of religious faith and practice” and in addition curbs religious free exercise; the other is a situation in which a “public religion … receives the endorsement and support of the state or maintains a formal alliance with the state ….”29 Due to the officially atheistic policies of the Chinese government, expanding the public role of religion requires first that the government treat religion as a cultural phenomenon rather than an ideological one, and thus be willing to permit religion’s participation in social and political life without hostility, as a cultural force. In view of the fact that some religious organizations acquire support from government in return for service to the state’s political goals in contemporary 27

Wood, “Public Religion vis-à-vis the Prophetic Role of Religion,” 49–50. Ibid., 51. 29 Ibid.,������� 42–3. ������ 28



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China, I assume that in order to affirm religion’s public involvement and to protect religious autonomy it is necessary not only for the state to grant full ���������������� ����������� freedom to religious exercise, but also ������������������������������������������������������� for ��������������������������������������������������� religious organizations to ������������������������ avoid ������������������ alliance with the state. This would be a decisive step in the pursuit of religious engagement in political life in China, before religion can function as an autonomous moral force. 7.2

Two Issues Distinguished: Religion’s Contribution to Public Political Culture and Religious Political Rebellion

To affirm the public roles of religion, bearing religion’s political context in China in mind, it is imperative that the Chinese government recognize the essential difference between religion’s critical contribution to public political culture and rebellion against political power and leadership. This distinction is also motivated by one of the likely dangers of public religion noted by Cochran, namely, the combination of religion with political ideology. As religion is seen as a�������������������������������������������������������� competing political force����������������������������� , in most periods of Chinese history ����������������������������������������������������������������������� the government has����������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������� exercised dominance over religious associations and their activities in order to ensure���������������������������������������������������� their���������������������������������������������� political obedience. This control ����������� results in either alliance with the government or resistance to ����������������������������������� political �������������������������������� power for the sake of free��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� dom ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� of religious practice. This tension between religion and the political regime comes mostly from the state’s restrictions and repressions on religious practice. It is the attempt by religious individuals and groups to achieve religious liberty that has motivated religious challenges to political power and leadership. There are also circumstances in which religion is used for “revolutionary” purposes (such as during the Taiping Rebellion of 1850–64), or religious activities are used as a cloak for antigovernment subversive purposes. “Revolutionaries may integrate religious symbols and values into their movement’s ideology, make use of the leadership abilities of clergy and religious lay persons, and utilize the networks and organizational structures of religious groups for organizing the revolutionary effort.”30 In particular, when the clergy is closely associated with the revolutionary classes, the latter might use the religion’s ideology and organizational structure in their revolutionary efforts. 30 Leland W. Robinson, “When will Revolutionary Movements Use Religion?” in Thomas Robbins and Roland Robertson ������� (������ eds), Church and State Relations: Tensions and Transitions (New Brunswick, N������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������� J: Transaction Books, 1987), 53–����������������������� 63��������������������� . Robinson gives six situations in which revolutionary movements might use religion as a resource in promoting the revolution (���� 53�� ):



1 2 3 4 5 6

a preponderantly religious world view among revolutionary classes; theology at variance with existing social order; clergy closely associated with revolutionary classes; revolutionary classes united in a single religion; revolutionary classes’ religion different from dominant classes’ religion; alternative organizational structures not available.

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However, if free religious exercise is guaranteed without the state’s interference��, t������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� he tension��������������������������������������������������������������������������� in �������������������������������������������������������������������������� the�������������������������������������������������������������������� religion–politics�������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������� relationship������������������������������������� will be transformed into religion’s positive influence in political life���������� instead��. When I discuss religious involvement in public political culture, the aim of such involvement is not to gain political leadership. Any particular religious body, while involved in political life, should neither ally itself closely with a political grouping (whether in power or in opposition), nor gain political authority by challenging the basic principles of state sovereignty. It should avoid reintegrating religion and politics, making “religious institutions superior to the state and religious principles superior to state sovereignty.”31 That would impair the proper religion–state relationship, and thus also free religious exercise, including religious participation in politics as an autonomous force. Instead, in democratic politics, this involvement is to facilitate the resolution of some controversial political issues concerning human conduct through the proper use of religiously based arguments in public political debate and decisions. It is a contribution of religious values to the political process. In addition to free religious worship, religious expression should be permitted and even encouraged with regard to social and political issues, instead of being prohibited. Indeed, as an autonomous voice, religious people may question and resist, within the rule of law, government policies. However, this is different from political rebellion, as it does not attempt to dominate political life. Religious engagement in political matters is conditional on the state’s independence of ecclesiastical control—that is, the absence of religious dominance in the political sphere—as much as on religion’s independence of state control. In democratic politics, the religious should not be favored over the secular, and no particular religion should be favored among religions. In the above text, I have clarified some ideas, such as religious freedom, the religion–state relationship, and religious autonomy, which are relevant to the issue of religion in public political culture in China. In the following chapter, I will discuss the issue of how religion may become involved in Chinese democratic political culture, especially in the context of religious diversity in China.

31 Lowell S. Gustafson and Matthew C. Moen, “Challenge and Accommodation in Religion and Politics,” in Matthew C. Moen and Lowell S. Gustafson (eds), The Religious Challenge to the State (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992), 3���� ����� –��� 15�.

Chapter 8

Religious Diversity and Chinese Political Culture 8.1

Religious Diversity and Religion in Chinese Political Culture������� : ����� Some Principles

Religious freedom promotes diversity both of religious faith and communities of faith, and yet one problem arising from this is religious engagement in public and political arenas. With respect to the situation in China, I will mainly consider the problem of religious diversity itself in the public areas, especially in the hypothetical context of a democratic political culture characterized by religious freedom. I have examined religious diversity as a historical and cultural fact in Chinese society. It may be argued that in a democratic China, the more religious freedom and autonomy there is, the more religious pluralism there will be in the society, the latter manifesting itself as both multiplicity of religions and increasing variety within a particular religion. This section will address the following question: in a democratic China, where the full right to religious practice is protected and religious diversity is widened and respected, how does religion in all its diversity engage in public political culture? I have noted that religious liberty and the independence of religion would not only bring about the wider diversity of religious beliefs and communities, but also raise the issue of religious involvement in the public and political domain. This issue is suggested both by the public voice of religion (or the religious) and by the need for the kind of public space that any democratic politics should grant to religious expression. A democratic China would not be an exception. A balanced position will neither privatize nor exclude religion from public and political life, but take the public role of religion seriously. In China, the current problem is not that religion or the religious engage in public life too much, but that religion is constrained too much in terms of its public role. There seems to me no doubt that religion should be granted a larger role in Chinese public life. Furthermore, in my view the Chinese should at least encourage the engagement of religion in Chinese democratic culture. This is the theoretical starting point from which I will discuss the problems that may arise and the principles that are needed to deal with them. The problems and principles mainly emerge from religious diversity and its political context in China. I assume that the 

Stiltner refers this to a “tension” (Stilner, Religion and the Common Good,2).

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fact of religious and moral pluralism in modern democratic society not only raises the question of how to treat religious doctrine in public political culture, but also of how religious doctrine could be introduced into public political discourse. I have pointed out that one characteristic of religious diversity in China is the difference in the form of doctrine and organization among religions. As shown in Part II, three groups may be identified: 1) religions such as Buddhism and Taoism that lack strong organizational force but have independent theology and scriptures; 2) folk religions that lack both scripture and a rigid��������� form���� ��� of organizational structure; and 3) others such as Christianity and Islam that are clearly characterized by both scripture and strong organization. These differences between religions raise the question of how their equal and proper treatment in political life can be assured. In principle, if religion is allowed in public political life, it must include all religions in society, since in democratic politics no particular religion is preferred to others. This is in keeping with Audi’s “equalitarian principle” on the institutional separation of church and state������� ������ (“the state may not give preference to one religion over another”). Any such preference given to one religion would cause certain difficulties to the practice of other religions and thus impair religious freedom. This principle of avoiding governmental discrimination requires that all religions���������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� be treated equally by the government. I would extend this principle to the issue of religion in political life, since this has to do with the government’s use of religion in making political choices. The ideal is that all types of religion should be included in the political domain regardless of their strength, either doctrinal or organizational. In other words, when I hold that religion should be allowed to play a public role, especially in political matters, I mean that the same political space should exist for all religions in the political domain. One consideration is that it is hard to say in advance that any particular religion or religions would be more relevant to political life in a religiously pluralistic society than any others, and thus, that the former should be given more space than the latter. To allow the involvement of different religions, as well as creating equal opportunities for them in the political domain, would also tend to prevent the dominance of any one religion. That is also a danger we should be on guard against in the issue of public religion.



Audi, “Liberal Democracy and the Place of Religion in Politics,” in Audi and Wolterstorff, 4.  Audi writes, “If the state prefers one or more religions, its people might well find it hard to practice another, or would at least feel pressure to adopt or give preferential treatment to the (or a) religion favored by the state.” Ibid.,����� 5–6. ����  It might be wider than this still, encompassing for instance ordinary citizens’ expression of religious convictions in public political debate.  Recall Cochran’s reminder of one of dangers to public religion is religious domination of public life. See Section 1.1.



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However, the application of this principle in practice might bring a contradictory consequence—that is, different levels of political participation by different religions. This is because different religions have different capacities to engage in politics, depending on their resources (both intellectual and organizational). Some religions that are strong both in scripture and organization appear to be more political than others that lack such resources, and the former seem to be more likely to become involved in political life: Christianity and Islam more than Buddhism and Taoism, and Buddhism and Taoism more than folk religion. Apart from doctrinal and organizational differences among religions in China and the resultant difference in capacities for political participation, religions are also different in terms of the degree of political concern. According to a survey concerning religion and attitudes in China, both Catholicism and Protestantism show strong political and economic individualism, while Eastern religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, and folk religions show more political obedience. Political individualism in Christianity would seem likely to lead to greater political concern and more outspokenness on political issues than the Eastern religions. These varying levels of political concern and attitude toward political issues would deepen the divergence of the involvement in political life between these religions. Such divergence is not due to different degrees of liberty given to the different religions, but due to their different capacities for participation. It seems that in practice the “equalitarian” principle would not necessarily bring sufficient equality with regard to the contribution of various religions to politics. Its original purpose of preventing the dominance of any particular religion in politics might not be achieved by this principle alone. I will consider three other strategies for preventing the dominance of both religion in general and certain religions in particular: the application of a “neutrality principle,” the independent involvement of religious doctrines, especially of those religions with weak organizations, and the translation of religious arguments into publicly accessible ones in the process of making political choices. In the following I will discuss these strategies in detail. With regard to the issue of ������������������������������������������������� religion in public political cultur�������������� e, t���������� o discuss the avoidance of domination by religion is of�������������������������������� particular significance in the Chinese context������������������������������������������������������������������� . When religion is permitted to engage in political life in China, it is assumed that religion itself should not become the direct grounding of the political process, especially in the construction of basic political values and the justification of political choices. 

See details about the survey and Wenfang Tang’s analysis in Wenfang Tang, “Religion and Society in China and Taiwan,” 314–15.  In my analysis, however, I have assumed that no particular religion is either favored or disfavored in getting involved in the political process.  In this principle, I mean between religion and nonreligion, as well as between religions.

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This risk is not likely to become a reality in any putative democratic politics in China, since all sorts of perspectives, religious or secular, are involved in its political process. It would be unacceptable for any particular viewpoint (for instance, religious versus secular) to override others in politics. However, in China, one tendency is that one particular system of thought may play an overwhelming and determinative role in the whole political life, as Confucianism did in some periods of China’s history, and the conflation of Marxism-Leninism with Maoism and the theories of Deng Xiaoping have been doing in contemporary China. When in the ascendant, such doctrines are considered orthodox while other competing doctrines are seen as heterodox. Arthur Waldron���������������������� observes that�������� “China has always been a state with an ideology” and thus “unless China’s fundamental culture changes dramatically, no Chinese leader can rule without some sort of broadly recognized moral or ideological sanction ….” In contemporary China, the aim of political ideology is the promotion of a particular set of beliefs, such as atheism and materialism, and the repression of other beliefs, such as theistic positions,�������������������������������������� in overall ���������������������������������� social and political life. This fact compels us to take seriously the questions of how to avoid religious dominance in the political process in China when religion is allowed to engage in politics, on the one hand, and how to avoid privileging the nonreligious in political life, on the other. Another principle is needed to solve this problem. The “neutrality principle” introduced by Audi requires equal treatment in politics, not only among all religions but also between the religious and the nonreligious. According to this principle, “the state should neither favor nor disfavor religion (or the religious) as such, that is, give positive or negative preference to institutions or persons simply because they are religious.”10 To prevent the government from favoring or disfavoring religion, Perry points to the two basic constitutional norms regarding religion in the United States: the free exercise norm and the nonestablishment norm. He interprets the former as forbidding the government to “take prohibitory action disfavoring one or more religious practices” while the latter as forbidding government to “favor one or more religions.”11 I will also suggest the need to avoid this sort of positive or negative preference for religion ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� in ������������������������������������������������������������������������ public political debate. One danger of this preference is the likely occurrence of political domination by the religious through the advantages given to it. It will “threaten a proper democratic distribution of political power” and “reduce the level of free exercise of liberty.”12 In Audi’s view, three problems may arise from this preference: a majority affiliation might dominate legislation and policy regarding religious practice and thus impair the interests of religious minorities; the making of law and policy (especially concerning religion) might 

Arthur Waldron���������������������������������������������������� ,��������������������������������������������������� “Religious Revivals in Communist China,” 328, 325. Audi, “Liberal Democracy and the Place of Religion in Politics,” in Audi and Wolterstorff, 4. 11 See Perry, Religion in Politics, 14. 12 Audi, “Liberal Democracy,” in Audi and Wolterstorff,���� 7. ��� 10



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be divided by religious disagreements; and the “entanglement” of the government in religious affairs will interfere with the independence of religion.13 Moreover, this preference implies not only the unequal treatment of the religious and the nonreligious, but also the unequal treatment of citizens in general, which would be against the very spirit of democratic institutions.14 The preferential treatment of the religious over the nonreligious in politics would likely lead to the other extreme—religious politics—by restricting and even excluding the nonreligious from political life. Besides preventing positive preference for religion (or the religious), the neutrality principle requires the avoidance of negative preference for religion, namely, the disfavoring of religion in political life. A relevant point here is the enforced privatization of religion, or the restraint on religion in public political fora, as discussed in Part I. This������������������������������������������������������ sort of privatization or restraint������������������� may appeal to the principle of church–state separation and the protection of free religious exercise, such that the state is not entitled to judge the belief systems (either religious or nonreligious) that people hold.15 The liberal restraint on religion in politics is to differentiate (religious) citizens’ personal and political characters, as well as to respect fellow citizens from other religious or nonreligious backgrounds, under the conditions of modern religious and moral pluralism. I������������������������ ts���������������������� aim is to grant full right to religious practice and yet limit religion’s role in the public and political domain. In contemporary China, the��������������������������������������������������� restriction of������������������������������������ religion (or the religious) in the social and political domain is a different matter. It originates in the dominant atheistic political ideology of the state, and the state’s resulting ������������������ limitation ������� of the spread of religion in public life in favor of atheism. This results in the constraint of religion in the political process in China. When the state restrains the influence of a religious tradition in political life, it is usually not doing so out of respect for other religious traditions, but in order to prevent its resistance to and rebellion against the state. Nor does the strict restriction of religion’s access to the political domain go together with the state’s noninterference with the free practice of religion. This reminds us that to avoid political dominance by the religious and to avoid the disfavor of religion are of equal importance in achieving an appropriate role of religion in the public political culture of China. In a democratic China, religious beliefs would be neither favored nor repressed. Full right to religious exercise should be given, including certain room to religious voices in public life. To understand this absence of positive or negative preference for religion (or the religious) in the political domain, it is helpful to invoke Rawls’s “principle of independence,” introduced in Part I. A��������������������������������������������� ccording to this principle, the�������������� construction 13

Ibid.,������ 7–8. ����� Ibid., 7. 15 Perry states, “government may not take judgments about the value or disvalue—the truth value, the moral value, the social value, any kind of value—of religious or religious practices or religious (theological) tenets” (Perry, Religion in Politics,����� ���� 9). 14

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of political justice as independent of any comprehensive doctrine is with the aim of achieving “political autonomy;” it can be understood as a strategy to avoid relying on any particular religious or secular doctrine in public political culture. 16 Macedo also emphasizes that even though moral and religious views may engage in the political realm, we should not rely on any particular religious or moral commitment in political justification. In China certain religions tend to have more resources and capacities than others for participating in political life. To avoid the over-influence and dominance of these well-resourced religions in politics, the second strategy concerns the independent involvement of religious doctrines. The aim here is to ensure some room in the political process for those religions without strong organizational force. According to Stiltner, three aspects of religion should be included in assessing the impact of religion on society and the common good: religious institutions, religious believers, religious ideas and values.17 Hence we should give room to any of these aspects of religion in terms of its contribution to public life, even though some religions may lack strength in one or more aspects. When I consider the issue of religion in Chinese political culture, I also take���������������������� all������������������ these aspects of religion into account and consider how they may contribute to social and political life in Chinese society. Because of the doctrinal and organizational differences among religions in China, it is imperative to work out how access to political life can be ensured for different religions. At this point it is important to recognize that it is not necessary to be a religious believer to accept the significance of religious premises and to embrace them. As Perry puts it: Indeed, to embrace a religious premise—a biblical premise, for example—about what it means to be human, about how it is good or fitting for human beings to live their lives, and then to rely on the premise in pubic discourse, is not even necessarily to count oneself a participant in the religious tradition that has yielded the premise; it is not even necessary to count oneself a religious believer.18

In other words, certain religious doctrines may be accepted by nonbelievers, or believers from other religious traditions (including ordinary citizens and public officials in public political discourse), as well as believers in the religion with which the doctrine is most widely associated (although it is important to remember that the doctrine may be traced back to more than one source).

16

Recall David Reidy’s position (introduced in Chapter 3, section 3.1) that in insisting on Rawls’s ideal of political autonomy, we may need to give more space to nonpublic reasons (including religious doctrine) in political justification. 17 Stiltner, Religion and the Common Good, 11. 18 Perry, Religion in Politics, 81.



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This consideration is applicable in the Chinese context. It will provide room for religions such as Buddhism, Taoism, and their mixed-practice form of popular religion, to play a role in political life in terms of their religious doctrines.19 For these religions, there seems to be less chance to engage directly in the political process in the form of strong collective religious organization; the presentation of their doctrines, rather than organized action, is an alternative that will enable them to become involved in political life. Such doctrines can become a force competing in public discourse with those of the more organized religions; this approach would make it less likely that the latter would dominate the political process, even though they have richer organizational and doctrinal resources to engage in political life. Therefore, even though these religions������������������������������������ (i��������������������������������� n the Chinese context������������ , Buddhism, Taoism, and popular religion) ����������������������������������������������������� do not have strong organizational force in political participation, their religious doctrines can be employed by other citizens in public political discourse, including those who do not adhere to these traditions. In public political discourse, these religious arguments need not be presented directly by their religious believers or organizations, but can be presented by other citizens and communities from nonreligious or other religious backgrounds. Moreover, as I suggested earlier, through religious believers’ activities in civil society, some of their religious beliefs may transform themselves into common moral values recognized by most members of society.20 Thus it may become possible for legislators and other pubic officials to refer to these values in their deliberative process of making political choices. To allow the independent involvement of certain religious doctrines in public political fora raises another issue concerning the distinctive relation to politics between religious convictions and religious organizations. Regarding the difference between religious organizations’ activities and religious convictions in public political fora, I have examined the entry of some religious doctrines into Chinese political life. In the following I will move to the relevance of religious organizations to politics. Based on the analysis in Part II, I will sum up three aspects of religious organizations in China that may affect their involvement in politics. First, some religions in China, such as Buddhism, Taoism and folk religions, lack strong organizations. Second, I have noted that there exist problems of independence����������� ���������� for ������ stateapproved ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� religious organizations and conversely of legal recognition for unofficial religious groups in China. In comparison with religious doctrines’ immediate engagement in political life, religious organizations would probably lag behind

19

Even though these religions are not so active in political concern, their doctrines might be still relevant to some political issues concerning human conduct, environmental policy, and so on. 20 See Chapter 4, section 4.4.

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in the political process, since it takes time to form autonomous and legitimate religious organizations, a precondition of their political participation. Third, in China, the state’s control�������������������������������������� ������������������������������������� of����������������������������������� ���������������������������������� religious organizations and their collective activities may affect its distinctive attitudes to religious belief and the political involvement of religious organizations(assuming such participation is allowed at all). It seems to me that the presentation of doctrines would be tolerated more than the involvement of religious citizens and organizations themselves in political affairs. In view of the above factors, it may be expected that in a democratic China religious doctrines will be introduced into politics before religious organizations are ready for political participation and expression. Such religious doctrines include doctrines from religions without fixed organizational forms. As ideas� and values����������������������������������������������������������������������� , these doctrines may be used by the government, public officials, and ordinary citizens in their public political discourse, regardless of whether they are religious������������������� followers��������� or not. In democratic politics, the ideal is to allow equal opportunities for influence to religious values and religious communities. Yet, in China, the government has a long inclination to view religion, especially its public expression and political participation, as potentially continuous with political rebellion.21 It seems that the state’s different treatment of religious beliefs and the activities of religious organizations will remain for some time. However, the state’s control of religious organizations may be lessened along with the improvemen������������������������ ���������������������������������� t of democratic culture in China. Thus, from the government’s perspective, to admit religious values into public political deliberation—such values to be potentially accessible to nonreligious people as well—appears to be a more appropriate way forward than the direct engagement of religious organizations. It is likely that in the immediate future there would be more room for religious values to engage in political life than religious organizations. Now two questions may arise. First, how do religious organizations engage in politics in a democratic China, though the room for them may be smaller than the room for religious ideas in the short run? In the next section (8.2) I will discuss the issue of organized religions in Chinese political culture. Second, when religious doctrines are introduced into the political process, moral disagreements among them may cause difficulties if attempts are made to ground solely political choices on religious arguments. Here it becomes necessary to consider the public acceptability of religious arguments when it comes to political issues (this is also the third strategy for avoiding religious political dominance). In Part I, I focused on Perry’s positions that religiously based moral arguments are inevitably involved in the political process, and that such arguments should be encouraged in public political debate. In the American context, he also assumes that under the nonestablishment norm, in making a political choice government 21

In Chapter 7, section�������������������������������������������������� 7.2 I��������������������������������������������� made a distinction between these two cases.



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may rely on a religious argument (for instance, about the “sacredness” of every human being) even if no secular argument makes use of such terminology. In Perry’s view, “the only intelligible arguments in support of the claim are religious in character.”22 However, it is a different matter when a religious argument is about the requirements of human well-being. In making a political choice about the morality of human conduct, especially a coercive political choice, neither legislators nor other public officials nor even citizens should rely on a religious argument about the requirements of human well-being unless, in their view, a persuasive secular argument reaches the same conclusion about the requirements of human well-being as the religious argument.23

The need for persuasive secular arguments in making political choices about human well-being in addition to religious arguments is also a requirement dictated by the nonestablishment norm. This norm forbids government from favoring religion, including relying solely on a religious argument (about human wellbeing) in making a political choice.24 At this point Perry’s explanations may be understood from two aspects. First, concerning religious arguments of human well-being, religious believers (even those within the same religious tradition) may have different interpretations of a certain religious doctrine and disagree about the morality of human conduct.25 It seems implausible to rely on one particular religious tenet held by certain religious believers or groups in making a political choice. To ground political choice on any religious understanding and argument by no means shows respect for religion in general; rather, it discriminates against other religious convictions, especially from different religious traditions, as well as against the convictions of the nonreligious. Second, besides disagreement among believers about the morality of human conduct, nonbelievers may also doubt any sort of religious argument as a persuasive basis of political choice. Therefore, religiously based arguments about the requirements of human well-being as the basis of political choice may be questionable for both believers and nonbelievers. For these reasons, Perry claims that�������������������������������������������������������������������� ,������������������������������������������������������������������� “no religious argument about the requirements of human well-being should be deemed sufficiently strong to ground a political choice” and asks for a persuasive secular argument for the same conclusion about the requirements of human well-being.26 From Perry’s perspective, this requirement for a persuasive secular argument brings about several benefits. It is an important way both to honor the ideal of 22

23 24 25 26

Perry, Religion in Politics, 68. Ibid������� .������ , 79. Ibid., 70. Ibid., 73–4. I���������� bid������� ., 73.

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“self-critical rationality” for the religious community and to test the various statements about what God has supposedly revealed, especially those that have a bearing in public political debate in a religiously pluralistic society.27 To rely at least partly on a secular argument in making political choice also helps “politics to maintain a relatively ecumenical character rather than a sectarian one” (such as obtains today in the United States) and thus contributes to “cultivating, rather than fraying, the bonds of political community.”28 I�������������������������������� n addition���������������������� , since controversial religious doctrines may divide us in fundamental ways, this consideration would reduce division in public political debate.29 In short, Perry encourages the presentation of religiously based moral arguments in public political debate, yet calls for nonreligious arguments to support them under certain circumstances. Thomas Schmidt would also allow religious expression in the public sphere in a religiously pluralistic society, and for him, religious beliefs may be considered legitimate grounds of personal views on political issues. Yet he takes “the translation of religious beliefs” as a minimal condition for admitting them into public discourse as political arguments. He holds that “religious beliefs cannot count as legitimate grounds for legal coercion unless they are translated into secular political reasons.”30 By contrast, Audi’s position of “religious-reason restraint” treats religious reason much more strictly in advocating law and public policy, even though his proposed constraint on the use of religious reasons also aims to avoid possible strife from religious plurality. His proposal���������������������������������������������������������������������� requires religious people to be motivated by adequate secular reason and to achieve a kind of theo-ethical equilibrium in their political positions. In my view, both the demand for persuasive secular argument (or adequate secular reason) in addition to religious argument, and the translation of religious beliefs into secular reasons in political choices, take the plurality of religious beliefs in modern societies seriously and attempt to avoid unnecessary disagreements from these diverse beliefs in making political decisions. My understanding is that these strategies aim to make religious arguments publicly accessible to people from different backgrounds, religious or nonreligious, when these arguments are used to support political choices. In this way, the use of religious arguments in public political discourse will no longer be objectionable. However, as I have pointed out, as secular reason may also be sectarian and publicly unacceptable to religious believers and even nonbelievers, I support the translation of religious arguments into publicly accessible reasons rather than necessarily secular ones. Suppose we accept the proposal that the diversity of religious beliefs be reflected in the political discourse to some degree. To place 27

Ibid.,����� 76. ���� Ibid., 78–9. 29 I��������� bid������ ., 78. 30 Thomas M. Schmidt, “Religious Pluralism and Democratic Society: Political Liberalism and the Reasonableness of Religious Beliefs,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 25/4 (1999), 43���� ������ –5�� 6�. 28



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this position in the Chinese context, we must bear in mind that the arguments about the morality of human conduct among religious believers are very diverse, since religious diversity takes the form of multiplicity of religions and a mixture of religious beliefs and practices. These various religious doctrines among different religious heritages will result in more tension and complexity when they come to influence political choices, if these choices rely solely on one or more of these very diverse religious arguments. The dialogue and deliberation in the political process would probably ������������������� ���������� encounter difficulties, given the variety of religious arguments. For example, on such issues as abortion policy, population-control policy, and the law on capital punishment in China, when religion is allowed to have a voice in these controversial political issues, a variety of religious arguments may be raised by Buddhism, Taoism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam from ��������������������������������������� their ��������������������������������� distinctive religious doctrines. Even though there might be some similar ideas among them on these issues, many different understandings will feature in the debate.31 Therefore, in making a political choice, including the possible amendment of existing law and public policy on these issues, it would not be plausible to base the choice on any particular religious argument; to do so would be to disregard other religious arguments in the debate, and other religions would have good reason to question the argument from one religion. The variety of religious arguments also makes it unacceptable to ground political choice on religious doctrines in general, as it would be difficult to achieve moral agreement among these religions on certain political issues, or to command support among the nonreligious. Hence, we might say that when religious arguments are allowed to play a role in the political process in the Chinese context, there are even stronger reasons to ask for the public acceptability of religious arguments in support of a political choice, on account of the variety of, and tension among, religions. At least, any religious argument that supports a political choice must be capable���������� of being translated into publicly accessible reasons to citizens from either other religious traditions or nonreligious traditions. This will allow those religious doctrines that have become widely acknowledged common values in civil society to enter the political process, not as religious values as such, but as publicly accessible values. This strategy is not only to avoid basing political choice explicitly and directly on any particular religion but also to respect the reasons from other religions so as to guarantee public acceptability of any political choice.32 In the above, I have discussed some principles and problems that may arise when religion engages in democratic political culture in China. I deal mainly with the issue of how to avoid the dominance of religion in the political process through several strategies: the “equalitarian” principle applicable to the variety of religions, the “neutrality” principle between the religious and the nonreligious, the 31

I will discuss this case in detail in section 8.3 below. For this point, I���������������������������������������������������������������� am indebted to Solum and Greenawalt, introduced in Chapter 2, section 2.2. 32

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independent engagement of religious doctrine and its indirect impact on political life, and the translation of religious arguments into publicly accessible reasons in making political choices. Bearing the characteristics of religious organizations in mind, I also discuss the distinctive relation in politics between religious values and religious communities, and point out the larger role the former may play in the process of Chinese political life. When I talk about avoiding religious dominance in politics in China, this dominance is meant to apply to both religion in general and any specific religion in particular. One consideration here is to protect all religions equally in politics, as some religions may have only a weak presence in politics. The domination of the political process by religious authority would impair the nonreligious as well as the independence of religious practice, while the domination of the process by any majority affiliation would harm the interests of religious minorities. The moral disagreements resulting from religious diversity also make it necessary not to rely on any particular religious argument in making and justifying political choices. These strategies do not weaken the presence of religion in Chinese political culture; rather, in avoiding the dominance of religion, or any particular religion, in political life, they help guarantee religious engagement in politics���� in a������������������������ fair and effective way. The view argued for here is that even if we allow and encourage the presentation of religion or the religious in Chinese democratic political culture, the entry of religion needs to be constrained by the above principles, in view of religious diversity and its political context. It is also a necessary condition to ensure that religion be granted a larger role in Chinese democratic politics. 8.2

Religious Organization and Chinese Political Culture: Christianity as an Example

With regard to the issue of religion and Chinese political culture under democratic conditions, I have concentrated my discussions on the involvement of religious doctrines in Chinese politics. I also make a distinction between religious doctrines and religious organizations when they get engaged in politics in the Chinese context, and consider the likely priority and greater feasibility of the involvement of religious values, as distinct from religious organizations in Chinese political life. The scope of freedom which the Chinese government will allow to religious organizations and their activities in a democratic China remains uncertain. There should be a shift from the present careful supervision of religious organization to giving a free hand to religious citizens and their activities in wider social life. In the meantime we may also hope that the government will gradually treat all religious beliefs and organizations on an equal footing, without regard to their official status.



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The role of religious organization in Chinese democratic politics is still an important issue at least in three respects. First, religious community is one indispensable aspect of religion in terms of its impact on public and political life. Second, one dimension to democracy is the form of “organization of collective action”;33 the existence and development of nongovernmental organizations (including religious groups) and their participation in political life are a vital part of democratic politics. Third is the fact of the growth of organizational force in Chinese religious life and the inevitable impact this would have on Chinese democratic politics. In contemporary China, even though the state controls religious organizations (albeit with a certain degree of tolerance), religious believers’ enthusiasm has not declined, and they form groups in one way or another for the purpose of religious worship. In some religions, such as Protestantism and Catholicism, this sometimes takes the form of un������������������������ official���������������� house church��� ��������� es. Alongside the construction of democratic politics and the advancement of religious liberty in China, including granting more freedom to religious organizations and their activities, religious believers as well as religious groups will probably increase rapidly in numbers, and thus there will be more autonomous and active religious communities, including new religious sects and new ������������ groups from� traditional religions. The prospect is that their religious claim and influence in politics in the form of religious communities will become more and more explicit. The transformation of the political regime, and the religion–state relationship, will make political involvement by religious groups a relatively distinct aspect of religion in public political culture in China. In the following discussion of religious organization and Chinese political culture, I will take Christianity, including Protestantism and Catholicism, as my example. In terms of the characteristics of religions in China and their doctrinal and organizational differences, the organizational force of Christianity appears to be one of the strongest, and its political attitude one of the most disobedient.34 I will place this discussion under two premises. First, even if there are certain religions in China that engage in politics in the form of strong organization, these religions’ explicit organizational participation should not impede participation by others. According to the “neutrality” principle (that is, no favoring of religion over nonreligion) and the “equalitarian” principle (that is, no favoring of one religion over another) described above in section 8.1, my discussion of particular religious organizations and their influence and involvement in politics does not imply that any of them should play a predominant role in Chinese political 33

Geuss,� History and Illusion in Politics, 124. As Hunter and Chan claim: “Chinese Protestantism is now a sustainable force … They are represented ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� by a national organization and have created a certain social space for their activities” (Hunter ������������������ and Chan, Protestantism in Contemporary China, 278). Daniel Bays remarks that the “size, resources and nation-wide presence” of this Protestant force make it “one of the most important of non-governmental entities in China today” (Daniel H. Bays, “Chinese Protestant Christianity Today,” China Quarterly 174 (2003), 488������ ��������� –50��� 4�� ). 34

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culture, nor that any preference should be given to these religious organizations. In addition, religious organizations among many other religions would probably be strengthened to some degree in the future by the change in political institutions that I have proposed. My intent here is simply to take those religions�������������������������� ������������������������� that tend to have strong organizational presentation in politics as an example in order to study some organizational peculiarities of religion in Chinese political culture and the principles that are needed in the light of such peculiarities. These principles may be applied to other religious organizations in Chinese politics when appropriate. Second, the participation of a religious organization cannot be detached from its doctrines, since their interaction with the public arena are interrelated aspects. Particularly in Protestantism, the tenet of “the priesthood of all believers” encourages Christian ��������������������������������������������������������������� believers�������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������� and communities���������������������������� to interpret scripture and theology from their own perspectives (for instance, when Christian doctrines seem to have a bearing on public issues) in their social and political context. In the following sections, I will first examine the situation of Christianity, especially the relationship between its religious organizations and politics in contemporary China. Taking this as background, I will then propose some normative considerations on the participation of religious organizations in Chinese political life. 8.2.1 Christian Organizations: Past and Present Relationship with Politics Christianity has a good tradition of social and political concern in modern China. The relevance of Christianity to Chinese politics and society�������������� , in the past and current era,������������������������������������������������������������������� has received ����������������������������������������������������� theoretical ����������������������������������������� discussion as well as practical attempt��s� at application.� According to Ng Lee Ming’s descriptions in Christianity and Social Change in China, in the 1920s and 1930s some theologians, such as Zichen Zhao������� (T.C. Chao)������������������������������������������������ , Yaozong Wu (Y.T. Wu), Leichuan Wu, and Baoqian Xu earnestly sought the possible contribution of Christianity to Chinese society, in response to the social problems of that period. They concentrated on the social responsibility of Christianity in the social reform of China. Some of them held that the issue of whether Christianity could be accepted in China depended on its contribution to the reconstruction of Chinese society. Among these theologians, specific positions differed: for instance, Zichen Zhao emphasized individual spiritual renewal through Christian faith as the basis of national reconstruction, whereas Yaozong Wu turned to social reform and social revolution, and finally agreed to a limited synthesis of communism and Christianity.35 Their common concern 35 Later Wu became a leader of Three-Self Movement in communist China and, among other writings, issued the “Christian Manifesto” (1950), a political statement that supported the government’s policy of manag��������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������� ing������������������������������������ ����������������������������������� religious�������������������������� affairs and accepted the subjection of church interests to national interests.



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lies in the positive response of Christianity to social questions, and the social responsibility of Christianity in China.36 At������������������������������������������������������������������� that time, Chinese Christian churches attached much importance to village work and the precepts of “go to the people” and “go to countryside” were much ������������������������������������������������������������������ encouraged. ������������������������������������������������������������� Many church members and intellectuals recognized that the indigen���������������������������������������������������������������� iz�������������������������������������������������������������� ation of Christianity in China needed to pay attention to the countryside—where the vast majority of Chinese lived—and to the churches there. They conducted a movement to “construct” the Chinese countryside as a whole in the name of Christianity with the building of physical churches.37 Yangchu Yan’s “Countryside Program” to educate common people ���������������������������� was an example, though this program was ���������������������������������������������������������������������� also�������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������ the work of�������������������������������������������������� many others outside������������������������������ the�������������������������� church. A real Christian countryside ���������������������������������������������������������������� experiment������������������������������������������������������ conducted by ���������������������������������������� the ������������������������������������ church was organized by Baoqian ������������ Xu��. Through involving himself in �������������������������������������������� the “Lichuan Experiment Program” in Jiangxi Province in the 1930s��������������������������������������������������������� , ������������������������������������������������������� Baoqian Xu��������������������������������������������� attempted to activate the ������������������ contribution of a religious spirit to ����������������������������������������������������������������� the ������������������������������������������������������������� reconstruction of Chinese villages through the church’s work there. Although the ultimate goal of this program was not achieved, the desire to advance the Christian contribution to society was affirmed and expanded by this practical effort and the theologians’ promotion of it. During the Anti-Japanese ����������������������������������������������������������� War ��������������������������������������������� of the 1930s and������������������������� ������������������������ 1940s, Chinese ��������� churches and Christians ���������������������������������������������������������������� continued to take part in��������������������������������������� �������������������������������������� the efforts of various���������������� groups to save the nation and ��������������������������������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������������������� to �������������������������������������������������������������� serve it through ��������������������������������������������� such����������������������������������������� work������������������������������������ as��������������������������������� the����������������������������� relief of ������������������ refugee����������� s, service to soldiers, communications������������������������ ,����������������������� ���������������������� propaganda, and so on.38 These programs and activities also �������������������������������������������������������������������� promoted ��������������������������������������������������������������� the integration and indigenization of the church into Chinese society.������������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������ Chinese Christians thus ����������������������������������������������� increasingly ������������������������������������������ turned their minds to�������� social issues���������������������������������������������������������������������������� . “Chinese Christianity, or Chinese Christians, thus became involved in the fashion for social action.”39 At the beginning of communist China, the foreign origin of Christianity led to its being ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� associated with �������������������������������������������������������������� imperialism by the Chinese government. So the Protestant “Three-Self ” Patriotic Movement and the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association were established to cut off foreign influence on Chinese Christianity. The strategy of eliminating the distinctions between different Protestant denominations, and the breaking of the links between the Chinese Catholic church and�������������� the���������� Vatican, led to the attempt to supervise all religious organizations and their activities under national patriotic religious organizations in the name of an “independent church.” As I have pointed out earlier, this sort of “independence” is understood as freedom from religious, economic, and political ties to������������������������ �������������������������� the West��������������� , not from the state’s control. 36

These points in this passage are based on Ng Lee Ming’s analysis in his Christianity and Social Change in China (Hong Kong: Chinese Christian Literature Council, 1997). 37 See Qi Duan, The Progress of Indigenization �������������� of Christianity in China (Beijing: Commercial���������������������� Press, 2004), 445���� –��� 64. 38 I������������� bid., 471���� –��� 6. 39 Ng Lee Ming, 3 (translated from the Chinese by the present author).

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Since then, some Protestants and Catholics who dissented from the official management system of religious affairs� ��������, and were reluctant to join this ����������� structure��,� promoted the growth of the unofficial church movement in contemporary China. This movement has been growing�������������� rapidly������ since ����� the relatively tolerant 1980s, in response to the problems of official religious organizations. It has been in continual tension with the Chinese government, from time to time resulting in the state’s re������������������������������������������� pression of its organizational activities. The formation and growing strength of Protestant house churches, in Hunter and Chan’s view, make them types of “autonomous Christian communities” in the sense that they “do not accept the authority of the TSPM, the Chinese government, nor of any foreign denomination; and ‘communities’ is preferable to ‘house churches’ since their size and complexity has now outgrown the confines of any individual household.”40 They dislike������������������������������������ the�������������������������������� TSPM��������������������������� ’�������������������������� s������������������������� political and religious compromises, and������������������������������������������������������������� thus its���������������������������������������������������� lack of authentic theology and spirituality�������� . Their� ������ independence from the TSPM������������������������������������������������� —the��������������������������������������������� primary characteristic of house churches���� —is a consistent feature���������������������� ,��������������������� since house church�� es “������������������������������������ view themselves as the true church, refusing to compromise with�������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������ the ��������������������������������� atheistic������������������������ , communist government.� ”41 The pressure and restriction��������������������������������������������������������� s�������������������������������������������������������� they �������������������������������������������������� face from����������������������������������������� the government reinforce the separation between����������������������������� these two sorts of churches.42 This tension also applies to ������������� Catholicism, where ������������������������������������������������������������������� the underground church—�������������������������������������������� with���������������������������������������� its������������������������������������ ��������������������������������������� rejection�������������������������� of ������������������������� and disagreement ������������������ with� the �������������������������������������������������������������������� official ����������������������������������������������������������� Catholic organizational structure�������������������������� ����������������������������������� —seems more organized and� challenging�.43 A problem of this division between both sides is �������������������� “������������������� a lack of a spirit of forgiveness�� .”44 After the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the political change in Eastern Europe, the Chinese government showed greater concern with religion, particularly Christianity, since the church was viewed as having played an important role in the collapse of the communist regimes of Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, the spread of Christianity in China, and the rapid growth in the number of Christian believers and communities there (and particularly in the southeast), are regarded as a threat to political and ideological stability.45 Since the 1980s, and especially after 1989, there has been a rapidly growing Christian community—the so-called “Christianity fever”—especially among������ some� 40

Ibid.,���� 81. ��� Jacqueline E. Wenger, “Official vs. Underground Protestant Churches in China: Challenges for Reconciliation and Social Influence,” Review of Religious Research 46/2 (2004),�������� 169���� –��� 82. 42 I����������� bid., 174. 43 See Edmond Tang, “The Church into the 1990s,” in Edmond Tang and Jean-Paul Wiest (eds), The Catholic Church in Modern China: Perspectives (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 28–42. 44 John Tong, “������������������������������������������������������������ ������������������������������������������������������������� The Church from 1949 to 1990,������������������������������� ”������������������������������ in Edmond �������������������������� Tang and Jean-Paul Wiest (eds.��� )��, The Catholic Church in Modern China: Perspectives,������� 7–27. 45 See Hunter and Chan, Protestantism in Contemporary China,��������� 97, 101. �������� 41



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intellectuals and in countryside�������������������������������������������������� areas�������������������������������������������� . Either in open or in house churches, this community has become strongly organized in the last two decades. It seems that the tradition of political and social concern in Christianity is weakened by the political control of the “Three-Self ” Patriotic Movement, except for social service and limited political participation��������������������������������� performed �������������������������������� by official religious organizations������������������������������������������������������������� , and social work by some ����������������������������������� nongovernmental�������������������� organizations with ����� a more ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� or less Christian background������������������������������������������� ). In section 8.1 above,������������������� I������������������ argued that the political attitude of Christianity (and Protestantism in particular) tends to more individualistic and disobedient. Not surprisingly, social and political criticism from churches would not be acceptable to the Chinese government, so religious communities are not given much room to express their views, especially critical ones, on political issues. The Protestant church in contemporary China, both official����������� ���������� and house churches,������������������������������������������������������������������� appears ������������������������������������������������������������������ to be ���������������������������������������������������� theologically��������������������������������������� conservative, probably as a result of traditionalism and isolation after 1949.46 As for the official “Three-Self ” Patriotic Movement����������������������������������������������������������������������� and������������������������������������������������������������������� the��������������������������������������������������������������� China Christian Council��������������������������������������� , their ������������������������������������� political ������������������������������� criticism is usually only reserved for “foreign governments and the capitalist economic system” while their ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� political and religious compromise with the government is made clear by their ���������������������������������������� full ����������������������������������� endorsement of��������������������� government policies.47 By �������������������������� contrast, according to Hunter and Chan’s observations, house churches in contemporary China, though distrustful of �������������������������������������������������������������������� the official ���������������������������������������������������������������� religious ��������������������������������������������� management����������������������������������� system���������������������������� and inclined to focus������ ����� more on spiritual matters, are �������������������������������������������������������������� not apolitical�������������������������������������������� ; yet they insist ��������������������������������� on a strict separation of religion and politics�.48 Generally speaking, the vast majority of Christians in contemporary China have not demonstrated any democratic political activism in an obvious way. Nevertheless, there still exist ����������������������������������������������� some liberal ������������������������������������������ positions ������������������������ toward political issues within the official Christian organizations, although such positions are not the mainstream.49 Younger Christians, particularly the growing number of educated young Christian intellectuals, present a less conservative and cautious attitude than older Christians.50 It is to be expected that they will form the spiritual and intellectual leadership of the Chinese church in the future, and will likely become more critical in their political attitudes. 46 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� China Christian Council tends to be fundamentalism and biblical literalism where “old pastors in particular often have an exclusive attitude with regard to other religions, to be politically passive and have little interest in social Gospel or inter-faith dialogue” (ibid., 77). 47 Ibid., 78. 48 Ibid., 85–92. 49 Unlike some older pastors and colleagues, Guangxun Ding, the leader of the TSPM and the CCC in the 1980s and 1990s, occasionally��������������������������������� adopted �������������������������������� a more open attitude���� in ��� promoting more freedom of religion in China, both in terms of reform inside the official church and ���������������������������������������������� the ������������������������������������������ rights of house churches�������������� (ibid., 90). ������������� 50 See Tony Lambert, The Resurrection of the Chinese Church (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw, 1994), 216.

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Many are concerned with the structure of the Chinese churches of the future, particularly the likely “united church”—a substitute for the present “official– unofficial church” framework—as a result of the expected achievement of full religious liberty.51 We have already seen the di��������������������������������������� vision��������������������������������� between unofficial and official churches, which has hindered the development of the Chinese church and the growth of unified Christian communities. The solution to these divisions would be an organized, united church, the gradual toleration and legal recognition of ����������� unofficial Christian groups����������������������������������������������������������� , and the independence of the open church from the state’s interference in theological and practical matters.52 In this regard, a reconciliation and unification between these two sorts of churches would probably emerge, as well as the return of the Catholic������������������������������������������������������ churche���������������������������������������������� s to Vatican control and the������������������ normalization ����������������� of diplomatic relations between the Chinese government and the Vatican. No matter what the concrete church structure will be in a democratic China, it seems to me that an unavoidable factor in Christianity that will affect its political participation is the formation of a united and independent Chinese church as a strong organizational force. Such organizational������������������������������ force������������������������ comes in part from the unofficial churches, made resilient by the political constraints in which they were formed. Indeed, such constrain��������������������������������������������������������� t�������������������������������������������������������� s can result in the flourishing of unofficial religious communities. Even though the����������������������������������������������� y���������������������������������������������� may ����������������������������������������� lack formal organizational structure—���� due to the��������������������������������������������������������������������������� ir lack of religious training, resources, or connections with other groups (domestic or international), they may be expected to become a central force of loyalty, exhibiting “strong ties with family and community.”53 Their strongest suit is their���������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������� dynamism,������������������������������������������������������ ����������������������������������������������������� which has�������������������������������������������� the potential to evolve a stronger form of organization������������������������������������������������������������ —through their members’ loyalty—���������������������������� as restraints upon them����� are lessened�. These autonomous organizations would promote the ��������������� development ��� of civil society in China.54 As nongovernmental organizations, these religious groups’ participation in politics will form a crucial component of democratic life. As Stackhouse states, “a ���������������������������������������������������� viable democracy depends on a division of powers not only within the government, but among the institutions outside state control

51

Ting Guangxun expressed this concern earlier in the 1980s. See MacInnis, 314. Jonathan Chao also expressed hopes for a united church in a conference (see China and the Gospel Monthly 24 (April 2003), 8). In the case of Catholicism, see Jeroom Heyndrickx, “The Need for Reconciliation,” in Edmond Tang and Jean-Paul Wiest (eds��� )��, The Catholic Church in Modern China: Perspectives, 199–208; and Jean-Paul Wiest����������������������� , “�������������������� ��������������������� Catholics in China: The Bumpy Road Toward Reconciliation�� ,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 27/1 (2003)������ , ���� 2��� –�� 6. 52 As Hunter and Chan put it, “The Chinese Protestant movement has not yet evolved an independent organizational form and one can anticipate quite radical changes when CCP [Chinese Communist Party] control over society is weakened” (Hunter and Chan, Protestantism in Contemporary China, 63). 53 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� See ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� Jacqueline E. Wenger,�������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������� “Official vs. Underground Protestant Churches,”�������� 175–6. 54 For a specific study on this issue, see Richard Madsen, China’s Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).



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in a viable civil society.”55 ������������������������������������������������������ According to most Protestants at least, p������������� articipation by religious�������������������������������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� organizations not only requires ����������������������������������� a���������������������������������� democratic political environment ������������ in which to flourish������������������������������������������������������ , allow����������������������������������������������� ing�������������������������������������������� room for ���������������������������������� the public voices of a variety of� organizations�������������������������������������������������������������� , but also demands that ������������������������������������������� the �������������������������������������� ���������������������������������� organizations��������������������� themselves���������� are of a democratic nature�������������������������������������������������������������������� , which may includes a���������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������� divers��������������������������������������� ity of��������������������������������� �������������������������������� religious����������������������� life, the division of power among organizations, ������������������������������������������������������� a������������������������������������������������������ democratic process of election for������������������� ���������������������� their leadership��,� and deliberatively��������������������������������������������������������� made �������������������������������������������������������� policies regarding the common good of organization� member��� s. The growing u����������������������������������������������������������������� nofficial�������������������������������������������������������� Christian groups and other����������������������������� religious organizations����� are creating��������������������������������������������������������������������������� a������������������������������������������������������������������������� certain ���������������������������������������������������������������� impetus toward the unofficial pluralization and democratization� of the religious situation������������������������������������������������� in China. As independent religious groups, they are o������������������������������������������������������������������������� utside������������������������������������������������������������������� the ������������������������������������������������������������������ official �������������������������������������������������������������� management structure and yet strive for survival and expansion. It seems that they have ������������������������������������������������� a greater���������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������� ability�������������������������������� (������������������������������ both�������������������������� ������������������������� doctrinal���������������� ��������������� and������������ ritual)���� ��� to develop ��������������������������������������������������������������������������� their own������������������������������������������������������������������ variety of religious��������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������ life, a richer forms of moral and spiritual values��������������������������������������������������������������������� ,�������������������������������������������������������������������� and a relatively democratic life within themselves. This democracy���������� oriented feature of���������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������ these ��������������������������������������������������������� religious������������������������������������������������ groups, although with some limitations at this stage, may make ������������������������������������������������������������� a contribution ����������������������������������������������������������� to ������������������������������������������� religious���������������������������������� organizations�������������������� ’������������������� democratic nature as a whole����������������������������������������������������������������������� ,���������������������������������������������������������������������� and thus their effective engagement in Chinese political life in due course. One may ask what the political attitude of these united and autonomous Christian communities will be in a democratic China. Since there will be no more constraint from the government, the outlook will be different from the current weak presentation of political and social concern among these Christian organizations. It is to be hoped that their political concern will be more openly expressed and their political participation will be strengthened to some degree. This strength, in my view, can derive from two sources: one is from each organization’s own tradition of political and social relevance and potential for political individualism, and the other is from the global impact on the church’s public and political involvement in national affairs, when the Chinese church is more open to foreign resources and to such influences as the social gospel, public theology, and liberal theology. 8.2.2 Some Considerations on Religious Organization in Chinese Political Culture When Chinese political culture develops to the point of admitting religious organizations to the political process, and religious groups such as Christian churches are able to express their concern with political issues, they and their concerns will have to be taken into account seriously as a significant part of the

55 Max L. Stackhouse, “ Public Theology and Democracy’s Future,”� Society 42/3 (2005), 7–11; also available at www.fpri.org/fpriwire/1202.200410.stackhouse. publictheology.html (accessed November 11, 2005)�.

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framework governing the role of religion in public political culture in China. In the following, I will raise some normative considerations about this issue. Firstly, I will stress the “independent” or “autonomous” character of religious organizations.56 I have pointed out the importance of independent organizational form in the sense of freedom from the state’s control of religious affairs, including from the state’s support of churches in return for religious service to the government’s political aims. As noted in Chapter 7, when these independent churches get involved in Chinese political life, this sort of “independence” should include the free expression of views on the government’s proposed law and policy, even if such views involve disagreement and protest, rather than blind support for governmental actions. Churches may present religious perspectives that bear on the issue of church– state relations, appealing to the government to implement a policy guaranteeing full freedom of religious exercise. They may also do so in debating political issues such as abortion and capital punishment, criticizing and appealing for amendment of the laws and policies concerned. These religious groups may be also ��������������� active ���������� in striving for certain rights������������������������������������� regarding their religious����������� �������������������� interests.57 In China, current Protestant and Catholic patriotic organizations and open churches have to serve governmental������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������� political purposes in their religious practice. Their clergy have to make certain religious and political compromises. This fact reminds us that when religious groups get involved in political life in a democratic China, these religious organizations and their clergy have the obligation to avoid any alliance with government, so as to preserve their independence and resist acting as a governmental instrument. Their engagement in politics will then provide an autonomous organizational source and more authentic religious perspectives. Their social and political criticism can then be widened to cover national issues, not merely issuing criticisms of foreign countries for the sake of upholding government policy. This is one aspect of the independence of religious organizations when participating in political fora. The independence of religious organization must be further specified in terms of its constraints on both the service of political aims and the direct exercise of political power.58 Audi proposes two principles for the role of churches in democratic politics, namely, the principle of “ecclesiastical political neutrality” and the principle of “clerical political neutrality,” which restrain churches’ political actions in “supporting candidates for public office or pressing for laws and public policies that restrict human conduct.”59 In particular, according to the principle 56 This point is developed from my discussion on the independence of religion in politics and the distinction between a contribution to political culture and political rebellion (see Chapter 7, section 7.2). 57 See Greenawalt, Private Consciences and Public Reasons, 165–79. 58 This idea refers to my analysis in Chapter 7, section 7.1. 59 See Audi, “Liberal Democracy and the Place of Religion in Politics,” in Audi and Wolterstorff, 40, 46.



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of clerical neutrality, one clerical virtue in exercising restraint on political actions is to avoid a situation in which political aims dominate their professional conduct as clergy.60 This kind of domination would obscure their identity as clergy, which in turn would call into question clergy’s ability to represent churches and specific religious convictions. Even though churches’ involvement in democratic politics may be permitted, and the contribution of their religious understanding to political issues may be affirmed, Audi is still worried by the “direct exercise of political power” by churches: “I fear that churches regularly exercising political power might produce religious fractures and quite possibly religious domination.”61 This domination would limit the freedom of both the religious and the nonreligious. Instead of pursuing political aims and exercising political power, the role of religious organizations in debating political issues should be to make contributions in terms of religiously grounded reasons, especially religious moral positions. As Greenawalt puts it: They have special competence to present a religious understanding, and if they are to speak at all, part of what they present should be that understanding. Thus, I suppose that insofar as religious organizations should continue to participate directly in politics, part of their contribution should be to present religiously grounded reasons.62

This presentation of religious reasons in public deliberation by religious leaders and organizations may better political life.63 Greenawalt then suggests two arguments outlining churches’ appropriate involvement in politics. When the legislative process is now inevitably engaged by all kinds of nongovernmental organizations, churches should be included among these organizations. S������� econd, in churches’ concern with “public welfare and conscience,” these groups can be “a healthy corrective to self-interested pleadings.”64 For him, “the ordinary political activities of religious leaders and organizations are an aspect of political good health rather than ill health.”65 With regard to churches’ impact on society and their remarks on political issues, I am inclined to agree with Audi and Greenawalt’s emphasis on their moral positions. Audi acknowledges that his principles concerning churches’ political actions do not require that churches and clergy not publicly take positions concerning politics and public policy, nor discourage political participation by 60

Ibid., 46. Ibid., 44. 62 Greenawalt, Private Consciences and Public Reasons, 179. 63 Stiltner also writes: “Religious believers and groups, for their part, should draw forth from their rich traditions visions of common good to share in the public realm, doing their best to make these intelligible to their fellow citizens” (Stiltner, Religion and the Common Good, 181). 64 See Greenawalt, Private Consciences and Public Reasons, 176. 65 Ibid., 178. 61

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religious citizens. For some religious believers, publicly taking moral positions is a positive religious obligation, and their political participation may be regarded as one aspect of their religious commitments.66 “This ecclesiastical moral engagement is surely desirable in a liberal democracy.”67 It appears that in the case of churches’ involvement in politics, Audi is more concerned with churches’ moral and spiritual powers, including publicly taking moral positions and ecclesiastical moral engagement. Likewise, Greenawalt carefully distinguishes three levels of the activities that clergy and churches may undertake: advocacy of moral positions, support of certain laws and policies, and support of, or opposition to, candidates and parties.68 He gives more weight to churches’ expressing moral positions than to their political judgments. He writes: “In general, perhaps clergy and churches should be slow to draw specific policy conclusions; they should regard their special competence as bearing on moral truths more than complex political judgments; but no principle of liberal politics precludes their drawing out specific policy conclusions in their communications to members.”69 It seems that in a diverse society, the contribution of religion to politics in the form of specific moral arguments of relevance to some hard political issues will be more acceptable than direct political advocacy, as Stackhouse stresses ��������� religious organizations’ moral and spiritual power in public political life: “It is not the duty of religious organizations to make public policy, as some try to do; but it is their responsibility to seek to influence people’s consciences so that their political decisions will be informed by moral and spiritual convictions.”70 A religious organization’s taking moral positions publicly, as I understand it, may lend some of their moral arguments wider acceptance, so that these common values may be used publicly in making and justifying political choices. In this way, the engagement and deliberation of religious moral views together with other views in public political debate will enrich public political culture and help the resolution of some political issues. In general, there is a regrettable absence and exclusion of religious perspectives and understanding on political issues in contemporary Chinese politics, due to the officially atheistic nature of the state, which restricts religious expressions in the public and political domain. It is to be hoped that in a democratic China, the involvement of religious groups in public political culture would make religious moral values and spiritual insights available, so that they could have an�������� impact on political ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� life and guide������������������������������������������������������� some political decisions, especially������������������ political�������� issues concerning the morality of human conduct. 66

See Audi, “Liberal Democracy and the Place of Religion in Politics,” in Audi and Wolterstorff, 41–2, 45. 67 Ibid., 38. 68 See Greenawalt, Private Consciences and Public Reasons, 173–9. 69 Greenawalt, Private Consciences and Public Reasons, 174. 70 Max L. Stackhouse, “Public Theology and Democracy’s Future,” 8.



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When religious organizations are involved in the political process, the prevention of their direct exercise of political power, or religious domination in the political process, is of particular importance in the Chinese context. This may be viewed as one application of the strategies outlined above to avoid political dominance by the religious in China when religion is admitted into politics life.71 In other words, a religious organization’s involvement in politics should be constrained by its nondominance of political power or any political process—for instance, noncontrol of law- and policy-making, or of candidates for public office. Such dominance is what successive Chinese governments have always feared and aimed to avoid.72 This constraint, distinguishing the involvement of religious organizations in political life (especially taking moral positions on political issues) from their direct exercise of political power, will not undermine religious groups’ political participation; rather, by removing governmental caution and strict control of religious organizations and their activities, more room would probably be given to these groups for their political concern and expression. When a religious organization engages in public political deliberation, the above constraints on both political aims and the exercise of political power are required to ensure religion’s proper relationship to politics. In the following, I will consider what other constraints may be necessary in view of the variety of religions and the potential variety within each specific religion. In section��������������������������������������������������������������������� 8.1����������������������������������������������������������������� above, I considered the effect of greater political openness on religions without rigid organizations and on the involvement of religious doctrines in the political process. This is one strategy for preventing political dominance by any religion with stronger organizational force and political concern. Now I am concerned with the following problem: when one religious group presents itself in political life, how should it treat other religious groups, either strong or weak in terms of their presence in politics? The ideal is to take into account all religious groups despite differences in their organizational strength. As Solum proposes, when citizens include religious reasons in public political debate, they should show tolerance and respect for the freedom and equality of fellow citizens.73 When I consider the Christian church (in the form of a united and independent church) as one strong organizational force in Chinese democratic politics, the constraint to prevent its dominance in the political process requires respect for the interests of other religious organizations. In China, there are some religious groups with specific ethnic backgrounds (such as Muslim and Tibetan Buddhist groups) whose numerical significance cannot be ignored when religion is allowed to play a role in politics. Along with increasingly free religious practice, the organizational capacities of most traditional religions may also become stronger, and new religious sects may emerge. The Buddhist and Taoist communities (especially among the majority Han 71

See Chapter 7, section 7.1. See Chapter 7, section 7.2. 73 See Chapter 2, section 2.2. 72

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ethnic group) include ��������������������������������������������������������� a�������������������������������������������������������� certain������������������������������������������������ number of�������������������������������������� professional groups and clergy, even if their ordinary believers practice them in the mixed form. The current national patriotic Buddhist and Taoist organizations may also develop into autonomous organizations—that is, into purely religious organizations rather than organs of government control. These religious organizations appear to be potentially competitive forces that may help avoid the domination of any one religious group or clergy. Therefore, when a religious group, such as the Christian church, engages in public deliberation, it must learn to respect other groups and have dialogue with them, even if they take different moral positions on certain political issues. When the leaders or representatives from a religious group get involved in political organizations that make law������������������������������������������������ and public policy������������������������������ or give �������������������������� proposals concerning some political issues������������������������������������������������������������ (for instance, the National People’s Congress in China and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference), it seems inappropriate for them to expect, or advocate for, their particular religious convictions to be the basis for political choices, or to attempt to exercise a deep influence by virtue of their particular religious perspectives on the deliberative process of political decision-making, unless their convictions can be shared by others. Other perspectives from religious or nonreligious groups should be taken into account in this process. These various viewpoints from religious or nonreligious backgrounds are expected to play an equal role in the deliberative process on political issues and to work out a decision��������������������������������� ,�������������������������������� which may be accepted publicly.74 In China, the great diversity of religious groups, each with its own understanding, demands that respect must be given to each in political debate, and each be given room in the political arena, even though they may differ in their organizational strength.75 Here, organizational strength might be construed in a minimal sense, for it may be assumed that any religious group is willing to be involved in political life to some extent. This consideration makes it necessary for each religion to exercise restraint in political participation, to learn mutual respect for each other, especially respect for religious minorities, as well as for the nonreligious. Drawing on Sandel’s ideal of deliberative respect in politics, I would go further in the Chinese context to suggest a sort of mutual respect in deliberative politics when diverse groups engage in public political fora. In Gutmann and Thompson’s words, this mutual respect requires “a favorable attitude toward, and constructive interaction with, the persons with whom one disagrees.”76 To be reciprocal, it 74 See my discussion of the third strategy for avoiding religious political dominance (including dominance by any specific religion) in section 8.1 above. 75 In section 8.1, I have dealt with the variety of religious values in political participation, despite by whom they are presented. In parallel, here I concentrate on the virtues of various religious groups and leaders in politics and their appropriate political actions, even though they also present religious arguments essentially. 76 Gutmann and Thompson, “Moral Conflict and Political Consensus,”��� 76. ��



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requires that one acknowledge others’ moral status when one affirms and presents one’s own moral views in public life.77 On the other hand, the political involvement of various religious groups, in their deliberation and dialogue—even controversy—over certain political issues, may facilitate their mutual communication and understanding with regard to the common good. Stiltner encourages churches’ “ecumenical conversation” with the adherents of various faiths about complex moral problems, for “the public debate benefits when persons of different faiths speak collectively and thoughtfully about their shared moral commitments.”78 According to Thomas Christiano, one of the values of public deliberation lies in its results, which include the enhancement of the virtue of participating citizens: “People who participate frequently in deliberation as free and equal citizens are more likely, many think, to develop traits of autonomy, rationality, and morality.”79 Therefore, mutual respect exercised in public deliberation can “contribute not only to social good but also to individual virtue.”80 These �������� virtues among the members of participant associations, such as lay citizens and clergy from certain religious groups, would probably help to improve their relationships with other religious groups. There seems no reason to s�������������������������� uppose that this �������������� openness to religious groups in public political discourse would bring any threat to political leadership; rather, this deliberative process would build up communication and cooperation among religions in a religiously pluralistic society like China. Besides the variety of religious groups overall, there are also internal differences within each religion. In the Chinese Christian church, for example, apart from the obvious differences between the various denominations, differences exist between rural and urban church������������������������������������������������������ es���������������������������������������������������� (in terms of structure and intellectual resources).81 Rural churches, mostly in the form of house gathering������������������������������������ ��������������������������������������������� s with a large number of believers, lack both trained leadership and highly ��������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������� educated laypeople, while the urban church, because of its geographical convenience and abundant cultural resources, may get more theological training for leadership, and better-educated laypeople. In the urban areas, the intellectual and cultural resource of religious life demonstrate��������������������������������������������������������������� s the “Cultural Christian” movement that developed in academic circles in���������������������������������������������������������������������������� the������������������������������������������������������������������������ 1990s. ����������������������������������������������������������������������� Typically, ���������������������������������������������������������������� these scholars are not regular members of any church beyond a loose denominational affiliation, nor have they been baptized.82 They ����� 77

Ibid., 77. Stiltner, Religion and the Common Good, 169. 79 Thomas Christiano, “The Significance of Public Deliberation,” in James Bohman and William Rehg (������ ������� eds��� )��, Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 243–77. 80 See Gutmann and Thompson, “Moral Conflict and Political Consensus,” 77. 81 See Joe Dunn, “The Protestant Church in China,” in Pas (ed.), The Turning of The Tide: Religion in China Today,�������� 243–58. ������� 82 See������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������ Institute of Sino-Christian Studies (ed.), Cultural Christians: Phenomenon and Argument (Hong Kong: Institute of Sino-Christian Studies, 1997), especially 25. 78

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consider themselves believers, h������������������������������������������������������ owever, ���������������������������������������������� and they regard their task as being to study, translate, and teach classical Western texts in philosophy or theology as a part of the history and cultural legacy of the West.����������������������������������� In Chinese ����������������������� u���������������������� niversities, more and more students of�������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������� philosophy, literature, arts, history and other discipl������������ in���������� es enroll in these scholars��������������������������������������������������������������� ’�������������������������������������������������������������� courses and become steadily ������������������������������������������ imbued with ideas drawn from the� Christian faith; some of them choose Christian studies as their major in graduate studies�������������������������������������������������������������������������� ,������������������������������������������������������������������������� and some of them become Christians, either culturally or by ��������������� conviction��. The growth of academic��������������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������������� religious research involving���������������������� ������������������������������� Christian studies in contemporary China, according to Fenggang������������������������������������ Yang’������������������������������ s observation, has effected��� ����������� a move���������������������������������������������������������������������������� “from ideological atheism—a radical form of secularization ‘theories’—to a more scientific, objective approach that affirms the positive and negative functions of religion.” These studies have grown “into an independent academic discipline that has become more responsive to the desecularizing reality.”83 This ����������������� affirmation� ������������ of religion������������������������������������������������������������������� ’������������������������������������������������������������������ s roles will promote the practical impact of religion on���������� ������������ society. The influence of academic���������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������ religious studies���������������������������������� on Chinese public life����������� , from the perspective of the ��������������������������������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������������������� humanities or social science������������������������������� s������������������������������ , ���������������������������� in my view has�������������� at ������������� least two dimensions: first i�������������������������������������������������������������������� s the��������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������������ capacity of��������������������������������������������������� scholars to express social concern and reflect���� ion� on social problems ��������������������������������������������������������������������� in their ������������������������������������������������������������ religious��������������������������������������������������� studies;������������������������������������������ �������������������������������������������������� second is the responsibility ��������������������������� of academic� ��������� believers��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� to ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� state their positions on public issues so as to help ������������������������ develop a social theory from a������������������������������������������������������������������������������ ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� religious perspective�������������������������������������������������������� that��������������������������������������������������� is suitable��������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������������� for Chinese cultur�������������������� e������������������� and society. Such ����� a��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� theory ������������������������������������������������������������������������� could help��������������������������������������������������������������� guide religion������������������������������������������������ ’s���������������������������������������������� impact �������������������������������������� on������������������������������������ Chinese society�������������������� , and its����������� formation may require������������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������� cooperation between����������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������ academic�������������������������������������� s������������������������������������� , religious�������������������������� ����������������������������������� circles������������������ ,����������������� and government�� ������������. From the above observations, it seems that the differences between����������� rural and urban churches ��������������������������������������������������������������������� will remain for a long time within the Christian church in China����� . In ��� political participation, the urban church����������������������������������������� (including its ����������������������������� leaders������������������ and ������������� members������ ) ���� and� intellectuals involved in Christian faith and studies�������������������������������� would be likely to play a more dynamic role than the rural church. Yet the ideal remains to represent the diverse standpoints within the whole church. This regional difference within the Christian church requires��������������������������������������������������������������� that���������������������������������������������������������� the urban church take into account specific moral claims and political views that are representative of the rural church and its believers, especially when the latter are poorly represented in public deliberation. In this section, taking Christianity as an example, I have proposed some thoughts on religious organization in Chinese political culture. When religious organizations are encouraged to be involved in political life in China, this will be subject to the “independence” constraint, which requires religious organizations 83

Fenggang Yang, “Between Secularist Ideology and Desecularizing Reality: The Birth and Growth of Religious Research in Communist China,” 102. ������������������������� He explains��������� ����������������� further� �������� about this����������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� point: “Between ��������������������������������������������������������������������� 1949 and 1979, religious research was only to serve atheist propaganda. The ‘opium war’ debate about the nature of religion in the early 1980s gave birth to the discipline, and the ‘culture fevers’ since the late 1980s significantly expanded the horizons of the scholarship … By the late 1990s Marxist dogmatism has evidently given way to scientific principles, which require neutrality and objectivity, thus making it possible to affirm both the positive and the negative functions of religion”�������������� (������������ ������������� ibid., 116�� )�.



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to avoid both political aims and the direct exercise of political power. Religious organizations may present particular religious moral positions in public deliberation on relevant political issues so as to enrich political life. In doing this, they should show respect for other groups, religious or otherwise. 8.3

Religion and Public Political Discourse in China: A Case Study of the Abortion Debate

In the previous sections of this part, I have put forward a proposal concerning the role of religion in public political culture for a democratic China. Instead of simply taking either side of the debate between liberals on the one hand and communitarian and religious scholars on the other, I have drawn on the resources of both sides to develop my understanding of religious engagement in Chinese democratic political culture.84 On the one hand, I have suggested that religion’s public and political expression should be a substantial component of religious liberty in China, and that religion should be encouraged to take part in political life in the form of religious doctrines and religious organizations, as well as the contributions made by religious believers in their capacity as private citizens. On the other hand, I have taken seriously the fact of religious diversity and its political context in China, and proposed some constraints on the government and on religion itself in keeping with the fundamental institutions of a democratic society. I shall call this position a “liberal-constrained public religion,” which covers both religious liberty and the public roles of religion in China. I generally agree with communitarian and religious positions, and these positions support the idea of the publicness of religion, religion’s moral contribution to public life, and the engagement of diverse religious arguments in Chinese public political���������� culture��. These positions also support the idea that religious values and activities may enrich Chinese political life. In view of China’s tradition of exclusion of religion from the public arena, from ancient times right through to the contemporary period, strong demands from religious communities for ways of expressing public concern, and the gradual construction of democratic institutions, I suggest that religion should be granted a larger role in Chinese public life. This is the theoretical starting point from which I have proceeded to discuss the details of the role of religion in public life; the constraints upon religion and the government as diverse religious groups and doctrines become involved in Chinese public political culture; and the principles to regulate religious political discourse. These matters seem to need further elaboration in terms of both the concepts of religious liberalism and communal liberalism that I introduced in Part I, especially when I talk about the role of religion in the public sphere in 84

In Part I, I put forward two possible syntheses������������������������������ of these positions����������� : communal liberalism and religious liberalism.

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a specific society, China, that is very different from Western conditions. In the Chinese context, when I rely on some basic ideas of these two liberalisms regarding religion’s contribution to public life, I stress these principles in order to constrain religious involvement in politics. When I propose an appropriate role for religion in Chinese democratic politics, I respect and adhere to some liberal principles, such as the “equalitarian principle” and the “neutrality principle.” These principles assist my understanding and development of the constraints concerning religion in Chinese politics. Yet, I understand that these constraints, either on the government or on religion, arise from the presence of religious diversity in Chinese political life. This position should be understood as different from liberal restraint, because my starting point here is the affirmation, even encouragement of the role of religion in public and political life within the framework of religious freedom. By contrast, the position of liberal restraint sets limits on the presentation of religious reasons in public debate, in favor of public reasons or secular reasons. Even though it does not preclude religion from the political domain, it does bracket religious reasons—and thus to some extent moral and religious pluralism—in politics. In summary, when I study the role of religion in Chinese public life, I affirm the essential publicness of religion—religion’s involvement in and contribution to public political culture. At the same time, I am concerned that there be adequate principles to regulate the appropriate engagement of religious diversity in the political process in view of the concrete religious and political situation in China. 8.3.1 Present Abortion Practice in China In this section, through a case study of the abortion debate, I will demonstrate some of the constraints and principles studied above concerning the appropriate role of religion in the political process in China. In contemporary China,������������������������������������������������ abortion was legalized in 1957����������������� ,���������������� and������������ the use of abortion and ������������������������������������������������������������������� sterilization has ������������������������������������������������� become��������������������������������������� a������������������������������������� part of the government’s populationplanning policy (the “one couple, one child” policy), which has been implemented since the late 1970s as a basic national strategy to curb otherwise explosive population growth. An already huge population����������������������������� ,���������������������������� its increasing growth������ ������������ ,����� ���� and limited resources���������������������������������������������������������������� in the country������������������������������������������������� are �������������������������������������������� main reasons ��������������������������������������� for the government to exercise this strict birth-control policy.85 From the government’s perspective, to practice family planning, including contraception, is a constitutional duty for all couples. This policy covers when and ���������������������������������������� how ������������������������������������ many children a couple may have.86 85

It is reported that China has to feed 21 per cent of the world’s population with 7 per cent of its arable land and comparable proportions of other natural resources. 86 These points about the government’s perspectives on the birth control and abortion policies can be found in Bruce Shu, “Population Minister Defends Abortion Policy,” in Lawrence R. Sullivan�������� (������ ed.��� )��, China since Tiananmen: Political, Economic, and Social Conflicts (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1995), 226–9.



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In defending this birth-control policy, the Chinese government is more concerned with “the right to live,” which is seen as the most basic human right, and with society’s commitment to development and modernization. The government claims that the policy’s goal is to promote a welfare society. “As it happens, China is the first country to openly, systematically, and actively control population growth in the name of collective well-being.”87 Couples are obliged to conform to the policy in order to satisfy the social and political interests of society as a whole, rather than their own well-being—it is sometimes expressed in terms of individual sacrifice for the sake of collective welfare. It is a general principle that in a communist society each individual is required to be subject to the interests of society, and this applies to the case of birth-control policy in China. Indeed, this emphasis on the priority of social interests is one characteristic Chinese cultural and political tradition. As H. Yuan Tien puts it, the state’s “advocacy of population planning rests on the broad notion of collective welfare rather than the narrower ideal of individual couple or family well-being common among developed nations.”88 This aspect of population planning policy in China is key to understanding the abortion situation. The system of birth quotas is exercised strictly to achieve the goal of policy.�������������������������������������������������������������� Each ������������������������������������������������������������� couple requires����������������������������������������� a government permit to have a child. ��� If a����������������������������������������������������������������������������� woman����������������������������������������������������������������������� is�������������������������������������������������������������������� ���������������������������������������������������������������������� pregnant outside of the government’s quota—for instance, if she is unmarried, or it is her second pregnancy—then except ���������������������������������� for some special permitted cases����������������������������������������������������������������������������� (for instance, among ethnic minorities), she ����������������������������������� will have to face abortion, ������������� by force if necessary, and even late in the pregnancy.89 Otherwise, she ������������������� and her family� will receive various punishments, including fines and loss of employment.� From the late 1970s to the end of 1990s, there was������������������������� ���������������������������� an increasing ���������� number of abortions�������������������������������������������������������������������������� ,������������������������������������������������������������������������� and �������������������������������������������������������������������� also���������������������������������������������������������������� a decreasing number�������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������� of birth����������������������������������� s���������������������������������� . It is reported that ������������ the rate of judicially enforced (or “induced”) abortion in urban areas was higher than in rural areas. ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� In general, contraceptive ���������������������������������������������������������������� failure was the dominant reason������������������� for �������������� the unplanned pregnancy that led to the abortion,�������������������������������������������� but ��������������������������������������� in rural areas������������������������� , noncompliance���������� ����������������������� with ��������� the government’s family-planning policy was the main.90 According ���������������������������� to an analysis of the induced abortion ������������������������������������������������������������� rate �������������������������������������������������������� at������������������������������������������������������ the�������������������������������������������������� provincial level, t������������������������������ here is no dominant causative factor in abortion among ���������������������������������������������������� first-���������������������������������������������� time pregnant women, but in later pregnancies family-planning policy is the main factor. Economic and social development

87

H. Yuan Tien, “Abortion in China: Incidence and Implications,” Modern China 13/4 (1987), 441–68. 88 Ibid., 459–60. 89 The official figure for the number of abortions performed annually in China is about 10 million. See Mandra L. Caron, Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human Sexuality (Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1998), 35. 90 Xiaochun Qiao, “Analysis of Induced Abortion of Chinese Women,” Population Research 26/3 (2002),������� ������ 16–25�.

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also both have an obvious and important influence on the numbers of induced abortions at every pregnancy in various provinces�.91 Traditional Chinese values, Confucian values in particular, encourage the family to have many children, and to attach more importance to male than to female children. These values are still influential among most Chinese families� today�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� , especially in rural areas; hence “the desire to have more children, or a male child, often conflicts with the state policy of ‘one couple, one child.’”92 Pregnant� women who want to have more than one child, particularly a male child in the case of women who already have a female child,93 often face strong pressure to have an abortion. In �������������������������������������������������������������������� some areas, the local ������������������������������������������� authorities exercise����������������������� coercive ���������������������� treatment���� of� ��� pregnant���������������������������������������������������������������������������� women and their������������������������������������������������������������ ����������������������������������������������������������������� famil������������������������������������������������������ ies (especially in the initial stages of implementing a population planning policy in a given area)�.94 ����������������������������� “The Chinese family planning program remains highly coercive through the whole process; central policies have brought out many forced abortions and other coercive activities in the birth control campaign.”95 T�������������������������������������������������������� hese compulsory ��������������������������������������������������� actions��������������������������������� ���������������������������������������� , whether enforced by central or local bureaucrats, are considered necessary measure��������������������������� s�������������������������� in the name of “the good of society” and “the long-term interests of every member.”96 Thus, women having an “unauthorized” pregnancy have to confront ������������� the ���� dilemma between “the presumed interest of the viable fetus” and “the interests of a big third party,” such as the country.97 The latter usually prevails, and� particularly in the countryside, if women encounter��������������������������� contraceptive failure����� ���� but don’t have a������������������������������������������������������������������ permit to ������������������������������������������������������� become pregnant���������������������������������������� , it is �������������������������������� unusual for them to be entitled ��������� 91

Wei Chen and Ya’er Zhuang, “Analysis of the Crucial Factors of Induced Abortion at Provincial Level in China,” Population Journal 145 (2004), 16–21�. 92 Ren-Zong Qiu, Chun-Zhi Wang and Yuan Gu, “Can Late Abortion be Ethically Justified?,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 14 (1989), 343–50. According to Jing-Bao Nie, “in 1988 a State Family Planning Commission found that 72 percent of all couples and 90 percent of rural couples wanted more than one child and a demographic journal reported other survey results showing that 88 percent of Chinese couples wanted both a boy and a girl” (Jing-Bao Nie, “The Problem of Coerced Abortion in China and Related Ethical Issues,” Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 8������������������� /������������������ 4 (1999), 463–75). 93 As Laurence H. Tribe points out, “China’s one family, one child and compulsory abortion policies greatly undermine the well-being of the couples who bear a female child.” Laurence H. Tribe, Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes (New York: Norton, 1992), 62.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� T������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ he���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� desire for a male child has a direct effect on Chinese abortion rates������������ ����������� for second or later pregnancies. Women who have previously given birth to son(s) are more likely to abort their second child, while women with only daughter(s) are more likely to carry the child to term (or at least attempt to) in the hope that it will be a son.��������������������� See Qiao, ���������������� “Analysis of Induced Abortion of Chinese Women,” 24�. 94 Xiaochun Qiao, “Analysis of Induced Abortion of Chinese Women,” 24. 95 Nie, “The Problem of Coerced Abortion in China and Related Ethical Issues,” 466. 96 See ibid.,���������� ��������� 466, 472. 97 See Ren-Zong Qiu et al., “Can Late Abortion be Ethically Justified?,”����� 347. ����



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to choose abortion or not ������������������������������������������������������� themselves��������������������������������������������� ,�������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������� or to be free to consider the interests or the moral status of the fetus. In Chinese tradition, children are treated as part of the patriarchal family’s private property, and the family has “the very right to determine the child’s life and its destiny.” Therefore, for the most Chinese, “a necessary abortion is a matter of the parents’ choice.”98 Today in China, against this idea, in many cases the woman’s right to choose is also disregarded. As Tribe summarizes the situation: Scant attention is paid either to the right of the woman to have her child or to her right to terminate her pregnancy—or to any right of the fetus to be born. Rather, the conflict is structured almost wholly in terms of corporate groups, like the state and the family, and centers on the needs of and the duties owed to such groups.99

Here, the right of the woman to choose abortion and the question of the status of the fetus as life, both of which are core questions in pro-life/pro-choice debate on the abortion issue, are not fully�������������������� taken into account�. It is obvious that both the government’s adoption of its family-planning policy for the sake of social development and collective welfare, and couples’ ideas of children and gender preference, are mainly grounded on secular or traditionalist perspectives. Such concepts as the value of human life, which may derive from religious visions, are absent from the policy and its implementation. As Geling Shang claims, the issue of abortion “has never been a religious one for Chinese.”100 In the following, I will discuss the proper role of religion in the abortion debate—and in related policy and law-making or reform—in China,101 in anticipation of a time when China allows the introduction of religious perspectives into political deliberation and lawmaking. 8.3.2 Religion in the Abortion Debate Regarding the abortion debate in China, I would, following Sandel, Wolterstorff, and Perry’s advocacy, take it that certain religious and moral arguments are relevant to the issue, and that they should be able to find a place in the political debate to some extent.

98

Geling Shang, “Excess, Lack, and Harmony: Some Confucian and Taoist Approaches to Family Planning and Population Management—Tradition and the Modern Challenge,” in Daniel C. Maguire (������ ������� ed.), Sacred Rights: The Case for Contraception and Abortion in World Religions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 217������� ���������� –������ 35���� .I understand that the idea of children as being a family’s “property” and thus that their destiny is the result of their parents’ will, can be also viewed as a sort of collective interest (as opposed to the interest of either the fetus or the pregnant woman). 99 Tribe, 63. 100 Shang, “Excess, Lack, and Harmony,” 232 101 Namely, policies or law on birth control, family planning, and contraception.

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Above all, a unique contribution of religious value to the debate comes from religious concept of the “sacredness” of every human being. Perry contends that political choices can rely on this religious argument even without the support of secular argument. In Life’s Dominion, Ronald Dworkin attempts to shift the abortion debate from controversial views about when or whether a fetus is person with a right to life, to agreement on the intrinsically sacred and inviolable value of human life. He claims, “The abortion debate is about intrinsic value, not about a fetus’s rights or interests.”102 He assumes that this notion is������������������������������� ������������������������������ acknowledged by both liberals and conservatives �������������������������������������������������������������������������������� (including theologians and religious leaders): “the truth is that liberal opinion, like the conservative view, presupposes that human life itself has intrinsic moral significance.”103 Dworkin believes that the great majority of people hold that “the life of a human organism has intrinsic value in any form it takes, even in the extremely undeveloped form of a very early, just-implanted embryo.”104 In his view, the real question for abortion is not “whether a fetus is a person” but “how best to respect the intrinsic value of human life.”105 Although the notion of the “intrinsic value of human life” may be closely connected with the idea of the “sacred,” and thus the sense of the religious, it is a secular formulation that can be shared by most people, including nonreligious people. In �������������������� other words, t��� he idea of human life deserving respect is also embraced by nonreligious people. “Many other people stand in awe of human reproduction as a natural miracle. Some of them … embrace the mysterious but apparently powerful idea that the natural order is in itself purposive and commands respect as sacred.”106 This is partly because in Western societies, religious beliefs (Christian convictions in particular) about the worth of human life have been transformed into a value recognized by the most members of society, having combined and been mutually influenced by independent streams of secular thought from Ancient Greece and the Enlightenment. Therefore, in Dworkin, abortion may be seen as undesirable and even shameful, not because of the controversial moral status of a fetus but because of the idea of human life’s intrinsic moral significance, on which both conservatives and liberals agree. Even though there might be������������������������������������������������ some������������������������������������������� differences in understanding of the issue of abortion among major religious traditions in the world, one common idea is that they “show strong respect for the gift of children, and each of them sees

102 Ronald Dworkin, Life’s Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and

Individual Freedom (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 35. 103 Ibid., 34. 104 Ibid., 69. 105 Ibid., 38. 106 Ibid.������ ,����� 92. ����



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fertility as a blessing.”107 Many religions oppose abortion from their own religious perspectives. For instance, in Roman Catholicism, the Second Vatican Council describes abortion as an “unspeakable crime.” Pope John Paul II also stated that “procured abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth.”108 (It should be noted that the early Church, following Aristotle, did not consider a fetus to be alive until it had attained a recognizably human form.) From a Buddhist perspective, the First Precept of Buddhism is “I will not willingly take the life of a living thing,” and this includes animals as well as fetuses. Human fetuses are treated as having equal rights with adults.109 Yet some schools of Buddhism and Islam permit abortion under exceptional circumstances, such as when there is a threat to the mother’s life, or the probability of giving birth to a deformed or defective child.110 I assume that the idea of respect for the intrinsic value of human life, including both fetus and woman, already exists among some religions and their moral teachings in Chinese society. However, these ideas may currently not be referred to�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� in ���������������������������������������������������������������������������� public debate, or by public officials in their decision-making on questions of abortion. Generally speaking, it is absent from the considerations that inform abortion practice in China. In a democratic China, this moral position about human worth would be expressed, and therefore could taken into account in debate and policy-making about abortion. This widely acknowledged idea, along with the related religious concept of the sacred, may be presented by certain religious citizens, religious groups, and other citizens in the public debate on abortion. It is to be expected that religious organizations and their members will proclaim the value of all human life and other related moral arguments concerning abortion so as to foster their vision of the common good of society. Stiltner encourages religious groups to engage in the abortion debate, using the ethical teachings and common principles of their traditions to “discern ways to protect and promote goods such as the life of fetuses, women’s well-being, and social justice.”111 In the abortion debate, various religious communities and people may share their distinctive moral commitments about the issue, “even if these statements reflect uniformly pro-life and pro-choice positions.” “It would

107 Daniel

C. Maguire, Sacred Choices: The Right to Contraception and Abortion in Ten World Religions (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001), 150. 108 Pope John Paul II, “The Unspeakable Crime of Abortion,” in Susan Dwyer and Joel Feinberg ������ (����� eds�� )�, The Problem of Abortion, 3rd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1997), p. ������ 21. ��� 109 See Maguire, Sacred Choices,���� 63. ��� 110 Ibid., 65, �������� 119. 111 Stiltner, Religion and the Common Good, 165.

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be even more beneficial if those groups could reach out and dialogue across the pro-life/pro-choice divide.”112 It has been noted that the Chinese government demands that the recognized religious organizations show uncritical support to official policies, and as a result, on issues such as the ���������������������������������������������������������������� abortion���������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������ policy and its implementation���������������������� ������������������������������������ these ��������������������� organizat������ i����� ons’ particular religious perspectives are stifled. For religious believers who disagree with abortion, besides their voices being disregarded in abortion policy and practice, they may themselves have to face abortion if they are involved in an unauthorized pregnancy, thus forcing them to participate in an act that offends their religious convictions. As William Jennings points out in regard to official abortion policy, “the millions of Chinese who follow the Buddhist path—along with smaller but significant number who are Muslim, Catholic, or Protestant Christian—cannot be true to their religious convictions and also follow official policy.”113 When religion engages in the public political forum in a democratic China, religious understandings and voices from any religious organization on the issue of abortion should be respected and heard; as autonomous organizations enjoying freedom from state��������������������������������������������������������������� control������������������������������������������������������� , they will present an independent moral force capable of dissenting from official policies concerning abortion. Some ��������������������� ���������������� religions, such as Catholicism and Buddhism, may show their strong objections to abortion, especially coerced ones. As long as these religious groups and religious believers express their authentic religious perspectives regarding abortion in China, I believe their religious moral positions, including the idea of sacred value of human life, would enrich political debate on this issue, and its related law and policy-making. This engagement would at least challenge the official use of forced or late abortion for the sake of state interests, and would instead encourage the law to take the worth of human life seriously and ������������������������������������������������������������������� respect the will of pregnant����������������������������������� ������������������������������������������� wom������������������������������� e������������������������������ n when ���������������������������� making abortion policy and exercising abortion. As Wei Chen and Ya�������������������������������������������� ’������������������������������������������� er Zhang conclude, a����������������������� t the beginning of the implementation����������������������������������������������������������������� of ������������������������������������������������������������� the family-planning policy����������������������������������� in China�������������������������� , the ������������������������ practice of induced abortion was strongly related to this policy.��������������������������������� But since ���������������������������� the end��������������� of 1990s������ , and concurrent with China’s rapid social and economic development, abortion seems to have been affected more and more by social and economic factors, as the result of voluntary choice�.114 If that is true�������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������ , one �������������������������������������� might��������������������������������� expect that more abortion cases would be the ��������������������������������������������������������������������� result of�������������������������������������������������������� wom���������������������������������������������������� e��������������������������������������������������� n�������������������������������������������������� ’������������������������������������������������� s voluntary consent������������������������������ , or even active desire������� .������ ����� Yet, it�������������������������������������������������������������������������������� is a regrettable��������������������������������������������������������������� �������������������������������������������������������������������������� fact that����������������������������������������������������� in urban areas,������������������������������������� more and more cases of abortion ���� are 112 Stiltner,

Religion and the Common Good, 170.

113 William H. Jennings, “Commentary” (On Nie, “The Problem of

Coerced Abortion in China and Related Ethical Issues”)��,� Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 8/4 (1999), 475–7. 114 See Chen ������������������������������������������������������������������������ and Zhuang, “Analysis of the Crucial Factors of Induced Abortion,”� 20.



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simply due to contraceptive failure. �������������������������������������������� Thus, the rate of induced abortion by women in urban areas is higher than in rural areas. It is couples������������������������ ’����������������������� own������������������� ���������������������� responsibility to avoid this misuse of abortion by���������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������ using���������������������������������� ��������������������������������������� necessary means of contraception.115 8.2.3 Constraint of Religion in the Abortion Debate So far, I have studied the potential contribution that religious viewpoints could make to the abortion debate in China, especially in terms of presenting a religious understanding of the value of human life. In the Chinese context this debate also involves other relevant values that should be included in the debate, and this makes some constraint on religious engagement necessary. First, many people have a strong desire to have more than one child, under the influence of traditional Confucian values. Second, it is a matter of fact that the problem of overpopulation in China necessitates some kind of family planning program in order to raise common living standards and promote the common good of society. This is a common problem faced by many developing countries in their modernizing process. As Qiu et al. point out, among these countries, “in a sense, the success or failure of development depends on the use of birth control. Everyone, including the married couple and the physician, should take this into account.”116 Couples in China have to recognize this and consider if and when to have a child�. Third, there is a tolerant tradition toward abortion in China. Family planning has long been recognized as a necessity by the religions of China.117 On the one hand, the Chinese believe that the life of a human being does not start until birth; the Confucian and Taoist traditions do not view an unborn fetus as a complete human being, so they do not morally oppose abortion.118 On the other hand, the (precommunist) state traditionally treated the problem of abortion neutrally; as Nie Jingbao puts it, “the state did not directly interfere and take any official position in prohibiting, permitting, or encouraging the practice until the middle of this century.”119 Fourth, despite the need for birth control and the tolerant tradition toward abortion in China, abortion should by no means be practiced coercively. A woman’s individual choice and right to abortion should be fully respected, and 115 Qiao,

“Analysis of Induced Abortion of Chinese Women,” 24�.

116 Ren-Zong Qiu et al., “Can ������������������������������������������������������������� Late Abortion Be Ethically Justified?”������������������ ����������������� 349. Tien agrees

to this in saying: “For developing countries, abortion has been suggested as a major method of birth control that is accepted by a rapidly increasing proportion of women of childbearing age at the initial stage of fertility transition in the course of socio-economic development.” Tien,������������������������������������������������������ “Abortion in China: Incidence and Implications,”����� ����������������������������������������������������� 462. ���� 117 See Maguire, Sacred Choices, 85. 118 See Nie, “The Problem of Coerced Abortion in China and Related Ethical Issues,” 469. 119 Ibid., 463.

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any abortion should be exercised without compulsion: this should be taken as a minimal requirement. As Nie emphasizes, there are rich resources in the Chinese philosophical tradition to resist any coercive policy, including compulsory abortion: for instance, Taoist philosophy’s stress on individual freedom from external coercion and the idea of ren (benevolence, humanity, humaneness) in Confucianism.120 These notions should be invoked and can make a significant contribution to debate on abortion. So far I have listed some relevant values both from the wider and more local background. For the most part these values may derive from nonreligious perspectives. These accounts should also play a role in political debate and decision-making on the abortion issue in China. Although the religious perspective of the sacredness of human life should be taken as one significant aspect in debating and making abortion policy in China, this religiously grounded moral argument should be used together with other reasons from cultural, philosophical, and social perspectives in public deliberation and political choices on abortion. These secular reasons are presented either in further support of the position advocated by religious argument, or alongside it in the interests of balance. My view is that to balance various values regarding abortion in China, both from religious and nonreligious perspectives, will help to work out a reasonable solution to the abortion issue. In China as well as in other countries, one crucial issue in this debate is a woman’s well-being, or broadly speaking, human well-being. As Perry suggests, religious arguments about the requirements of human well-being—that is, what is truly good for human beings and what must be done for humans to flourish— cannot be a sufficient grounding for a political choice. Any political position, either of agreement or disagreement with abortion, cannot simply rely on religious arguments about human well-being. There are different understandings of human well-being �������������������������������������������������������������������� both ��������������������������������������������������������������� among the variety of religions and between religious believers and nonbelievers. These �������������������������������������������������������������� understandings, in the Chinese context, may contain the cultural, philosophical and social values listed previously. As I propose, citizens should always be encouraged to present religiously grounded moral arguments (diverse though these will be) in the public deliberation of political issues, if they hold such views. I also agree with Greenawalt that religious people may give publicly any moral arguments relevant to the abortion issue, whether those views are associated with their religious tradition or not. But public officials, in their policy-making on abortion, are required to exercise more restraints when�������������������������������������������������������������� citing religiously based arguments��������������������������� than ordinary citizens in their public contributions to a debate and in making political decisions. Avoiding explicit reliance on religious reasons about human well-being, public officials are expected to translate these reasons into publicly accessible ones. Simultaneous���� ly��, they are asked to������������������������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������������������������ refer to other moral values in the Chinese context (such as

120 Ibid.,

470.



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those I listed above) that are related to the common good of members (including women). To encourage the presence of religion in public political discourse on abortion, I do not intend to argue for the banning of abortion in China; it may be permitted under certain circumstances, such as for the sake of birth control. As Tien claims, in China, “heavy reliance on abortion in bringing about fertility transition, in a nutshell, probably cannot be easily avoided or bypassed.”121 Instead, I think this issue cannot simply be settled solely on the basis of the state’s interests, or those of any other group. I have proposed the introduction of certain religious values, especially religious views on the sacredness of human life, together with other moral values, into the political process of debating about abortion and making public policy. These arguments about the moral significance of human life and human freedom, either from religious or nonreligious perspectives, must be engaged rather than avoided in this debate. Through this engagement, it is hoped that policy-making on abortion may proceed more reasonably and abortion may be exercised in a more humane way in China.

121 He states further: “Resort to abortion among Chinese couples would probably grow in any event in the course of the country’s development” (Tien, �������������������� “Abortion in China: Incidence and Implications,”������ 462). �����

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Conclusion This study has explored the meaning of religious liberty in the aspect of religion in������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ public life������������������������������������������������������������������������ ,����������������������������������������������������������������������� particularly in������������������������������������������������������� public political culture in a democratic China in the context of Chinese religious diversity. I have attempted to establish two related theses. First, religious empowerment, and the contribution of religious individuals and groups to the public and political arena, should be a substantial component of the full realization of religious liberty in China, and this presupposes that religious individuals and communities are free to practice their religions without interference from the state or other institutions and individuals. Second, with regard to religious diversity in public political culture in China, some constraints concerning both governmental treatment of various religions, and the actions in political life of religious groups themselves, are needed, in keeping with the fundamental institutions of a democratic society. In other words, in China, religion may play a significant role in the pubic and political domain when constrained by some liberal principles and democratic ideals. This position—call it “liberal-constrained public religion”—insists on the one hand that the public roles of religion should be recognized and enlarged in a democratic China, and on the other hand, requires that this engagement be constrained, in view of the characteristics of religion, its political context in China, and basic democratic institutions. In articulating this position, I have drawn on ���������������������������� the resources of both sides of the Western academic debate (mostly by American scholars) on the issue of religion in the public sphere so as to develop my understanding of religious engagement in Chinese democratic political culture. However, my position should be distinguished from both sides. First, with regard to the public roles of religion, I generally agree with the communitarian and religious thinkers, and hold that the engagement of religious believers and organizations, and their diverse religious arguments, may enrich Chinese political life, and thus make contributions to public life; yet I stress and develop some principles by which religious political discourse ought properly to be constrained. These principles and constraints mainly include the government’s neutral stand on religion, and equal treatment of all religions in political life; the absence of political dominance by religion either in general or in particular, especially the absence of the direct exercise of political power by religious organizations; and the independence of religion not only from state interference but also from any  The use of the term “liberal” here implies both general liberal ideals regarding religious liberty and the application of certain principles specifically to understanding the issues raised by religion in Chinese public life.

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political aims. This independence also requires the presence of religion in political life as an autonomous force representing truly religious perspectives, even capable of dissenting with government policy. In view of the doctrinal and organizational differences among religions in China, and the government’s varying treatment of religious beliefs and religious organizational activities, I have suggested the importance of the independent engagement of religious doctrines in Chinese political life, and pointed out the likely priority and greater feasibility of the involvement of religious values, as distinct from religious organizations,���������������������������������������������������� in politics���������������������������������������� . In public political debate, religious citizens from a religious group should also learn to respect and enter dialogue with other groups and citizens. In the Chinese context, I tried to develop a model of religion’s impact on public political culture in terms of its moral function in civil society. From a long-term perspective, some religious doctrines may transform themselves into values that are commonly held and acknowledged by most members of society, religious and nonreligious alike. In this way, these values, expressed in publicly accessible terms, may enter the political process. I understand this model’s application to Chinese society from three aspects. First, through the affirmation of religion’s contribution to moral and communal life in civil society (through its potential to affect human character and encourage virtue and community spirit), some widely recognized values derived from religious beliefs may be invoked in debating political issues. Second, although some religions lack strong organizational participation in political life, religious activities of their followers in civil society may cause the spread of original religious values to whole society, thereby making these values available to public political debate and decisions, as one kind of public resource. Third, I support religious organizations’ taking moral positions in public deliberation, in which their moral arguments may acquire wide acceptance and be employed in making and justifying political choices. In political decision-making, it is evident that public officials should exercise more restraint on the use of religious reasons. Because of diverse religious arguments among the multiplicity of religions and the syncretic nature of religious beliefs in Chinese society, public officials should avoid explicitly and directly basing political choices either on religious doctrine in general or on any particular religious argument. Besides employing religious ideas already transformed into common values in civil society, a religious understanding of human well-being may also be relevant to political issues, especially concerning the conduct of human morality, but public officials should be able to translate these religious ideas into publicly accessible reasons as a minimal requirement of religious beliefs’ entry into political choices. This is to guarantee a nonsectarian political justification, where those reasons that have their origin in religious beliefs must be acceptable to citizens either from other religious traditions or from the secular part of society. To satisfy democratic institutions, the above principles for regulating the appropriate engagement of religious diversity in the political process in China



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constrain religious involvement in politics to some degree; yet they aim to make this involvement more acceptable, and thus, more effective. To understand the constraints on public religion in the Chinese context, even though I adhere to some liberal principles such as the “equalitarian” principle and the “neutrality” principle, this position is also distinct from liberal restraint proposed by political liberals. These ���������������������������������������������� constraints, ���������������������������������������� either on government or on religion, arise from religious engagement itself in a Chinese context—that is, from the fact of religious diversity in Chinese political life. My starting point is to affirm and encourage the engagement and contribution of religion in Chinese public and political life against the background of China’s tradition of excluding religion from the public arena, the strong religious demand for public expression, and current reform in the direction of democratic institutions. The liberal restraint sets aside moral and religious values in favour of the political value of public reason in public political culture. One general point in my study is to propose religion’s larger role in Chinese public life, including civil society and the political domain. This role should exist in the context of full religious liberty in China, or the Chinese should at least encourage the entry and presentation of religious perspectives in their democratic culture. Generally speaking, the purpose of this study has been to investigate the issues raised by religious diversity in the Chinese social and political context. I have attempted to place this topic in a context that is characterized not by religion’s over-influence on public life but by the restriction of religion in the public and political realm for the sake of state interests, which are informed by a policy of official state atheism. For this study, I have employed theoretical resources on public religion from Western academics while I have tried to explore new problems and issues in the Chinese context. I believe this study may make theoretical contributions in two respects. First, issues and problems concerning religion in the public and political domain in China have not received adequate discussions by many Western scholars. These questions may include the issues of religious autonomy, the potential for religious dominance of political life, a distinction between religion’s contribution to public political culture and religiously inspired political rebellion, doctrinal and organizational differences among various religious groups, and their distinctive relations to political life. This position of “liberal-constrained public religion” in the Chinese context can also be understood to some degree differently from either side of the debate among Western scholars. This treatment of public religion in terms of the religious and political particularities of a specific society can be seen as a dialogue with the Western resources concerning a set of common themes. In this way, the issue of public religion may be understood from different contexts; their similarities and differences may also arise from this dialogue. Thus I would say that this study may enrich the theory of pubic religion through its contextualization. Second, the topic of religion in public life in China has not been much explored in terms of normative considerations. The wide attention to and study of public

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religion by Western academics remind us of the need for a similar study in the Chinese context, in anticipation of the construction of democratic institutions, as well as more openness and freedom in the sphere of religious exercise in China. Here I have only begun to raise this question and explore some principles regarding the issue of religion in public political culture. Through ����������������������������������������������������������������������� this study, I have suggested a position of “liberal-constrained public religion.” I have not been able to consider it in relation to other public domains in China, so it remains for future work to examine the applicability of this position to, for instance,���������������������������������������������������������������� education, media,���������������������������������������������� economic life�������������������������������� ������������������������������� or ecological issues. In these public issues, this position may require further amendment and development. Despite the work to be done, I believe that the issue of religion in public life in China will become increasingly significant, and that more studies will be needed. China, once it adopts a more open ����������������������������������������������������� attitude ������������������������������������������������ to religious belief and practice, will not only bring about the enjoyment of religious liberty among believers, but will also activate rich religious resources in Chinese society. Thus, religion may contribute to a vital and healthy public life in China.

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Index abortion China 132–41 See also Audi, Rawls, Reidy, Perry, Sandel, and Wolterstorff agape 47, 48, 49, 50���� ,��� 61 See also love Audi, Robert 12, 31����������������������� –���������������������� 7, 59, 89, 106, 124��� –��5 abortion 33 civil virtue 32, 33, 34 democratic citizenship 37 equalitarian principle 31, 106, 107, 132 libertarian principle 31, 59 neutrality principle 31, 107, 108��������� –�������� 9, 117, 132 religious liberty 31, 32, 34 secular reason (secular rationale) 32, 34, 35, 36 Casanova, Jos������������������� é������������������ 10, 11����������� –12�������� ,������� 17, 63 ������ deprivatization of religion, 11, 17 China 67, 111, 115, 122������� –������ 3, 144 Ching, Julia 73, 74 civil society 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 18, 23, 24, 65, 66 See also Rawls Clor, Harry M. 14��� –15 Cochran, Clarke E. 9�������������������� –������������������� 10, 14,������������ 16��������� ����������� –17������ , 103 communal liberalism 63������� –������ 4, 131 Confucianism 71fn2, 73, 99, 108, 134, 139, 140 cultural Christian, China 129���� –��� 30 Dworkin, Ronald 136��� –��7 intrinsic value of human life 136 Fowler, Robert B. 15 Greenawalt, Kent 30, 43�������������� –������������� 4, 124, 125, 126 on public reason 44 Gernet, Jacques 80��� –81

Hollenbach, David 2, 13����������������� –14�������������� , 57, 94, 95, 97 Human Rights Watch/Asia, 84, 85 Jackson, Timothy 47��� –�� 50 civil agapism, 47, 49, 50 love and justice 48, 49, 50 Larmore, Charles 12, 19, 21 love 14, 22, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 61, 64, 101 See also agape Luo, Zhufeng 72 Macedo, Stephen 20, 21, 24fn32, 28��� –9� Maritain, Jacques 63 monotheism 77 Murray, John Courtney 95, 96 Ng, Lee Ming 118��� –19 Niebuhr, Reinhold 50 Niebuhr, H. Richard 77 Perry, Michael J. 17, 45����������������� –���������������� 7, 61, 81, 108, 110, 112�������� –14����� , 115 abortion 47 ecumenical political dialogue 45 human well�������������� -������������� being 46, 113 r�������������������������������������� eligious������������������������������ morality (argument) 45������� –������ 7, 110 sacredness of human being 46, 47,113 political justice see Rawls and Wolterstorff polytheism 76 privatization of religion 10, 17, 59, 88, 89, 109 Protestant “���������������������� ����������������������� Three����������������� Self ���������������� ”����������� ������������ Patriotic Movement, China 74,119, 121 public reason 44, 49, 54, 62, 145 See also Quinn, Greenawalt, Rawls, Sandel, Solum, and Reidy public morality 14��� –15 See also religion and morality

160

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Quinn, Philip 35�� –�6 on public����������� ����������������� reason 36 Rawls, John 18, 21��������������������� –9������������������� , 30��������������� –�������������� 31, 59, 60, 89 abortion 27�� –�8 background culture (civil society) 18, 23, 24 duty of civility 37 liberty of conscience 23 public reason 25��������������������� –�������������������� 8, 30, 36, 39fn2, 59 public political culture 18 political justice 22��� –��3 political liberalism, 21��� –��4 reasonable pluralism 20, 21, 25 religious doctrine 22, 23 Reidy, David 42�� –�3 abortion 42��� –��3 on pubic reason 42��� –��3 r���������������������������������� eligion and morality 12����������� ������������� –14�������� , 16, 51 China 66, 98���� –��� 101 religions, China Buddhism 74, 75, 99�������������� –������������� 100, 107, 111 Christianity 77, 100������������������ –����������������� 101, 107, 118���� –��� 23 Islam 76, 100, 107 popular religion 75, 76, 107, 111 Taoism 74,���������������������������� 75, 99��������������������� ��������������������������� –�������������������� 100, 107, 111, 139, 140 religious diversity 12, 34, 35����������� –���������� 7, 60����� –���� 61, 64����������� –���������� 5, 67, 114 China 73����������������������������� –���������������������������� 4, 94, 98, 101, 105��������� –�������� 6, 115, 116, 127��������� –�������� 8, 131�� –�2 See also Rawls religiosity, China 71������ –����� 2, 98 religious doctrine 18, 54, 58���������� –��������� 61, 106, 112�������������������� –15����������������� , 125������������ –����������� 6, 136, 137 China 67, 74��������������������� –�������������������� 7, 86, 87,111, 115, 138,139��� –�� 40 religious������������������� liberalism 64, 131 religious liberty (freedom) 17, 24, 57����� –���� 60, 64������������������ –����������������� 5, 94������������ –����������� 7, 105, 106 China 2, 88�������������������������� –������������������������� 90, 97������������������� –������������������ 103, 131, 143, 145 See also Audi

religious organization China 67, 74�������������������������� –������������������������� 7, 80, 82���������������� –��������������� 6, 10���������� 3–�������� 4, 107, 111������������������ –12��������������� , 116���������� –31������� , 137�� –�8 religious political rebellion 103������� –������ 4, 112 Rorty, Richard 10����������� –���������� 11, 59, 88 Sandel, Michae J. 38������������������� –������������������ 42, 59������������ –����������� 60, 63, 128 abortion 40��� –�� 41 deliberative mode 41 on public reason 40, 41,44 religious argument����������� ������������������� 40, 41, 44 separation of church and state 3fn2, 24, 31, 33, 58, 88, 97, 106 secularization 10, 11 Solum, Lawrence B. 25fn33, 29�������� –30����� , 127 on public reason 25fn33, 29��� –�� 30 Stackhouse, Max L. 66, 122������� –������ 3, 126 Stiltner, Brian 42, 63������������� –4����������� , 67, 101, 110,125fn63, 129, 137�� –8 Tillich, Paul 50 Tocqueville, Alexis de 16 United Nations Declaration on the Eliminations of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination ��������������� Based on Religion or Belief 89 United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 89, 90 Weithman, Paul J. 27, 49fn60 White Paper on Freedom of Religious Belief in China 72n10, 73fn12 Wolterstorff, Nicholas 34, 51������� –������ 4, 61 abortion 51 consocial position 53 on political justice 54 politics of multiple communities, 53 religious������������ people 51�� –�2 Wood, James E. 12, 97, 102 Yang, C. K. 72, 75, 76, 79����������� –���������� 80, 83, 99