From FPRI:
The 14th Annual Templeton Lecture on
Religion and World Affairs
THE RELIGIOUS ORIGINS OF RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE
by Eric Nelson
Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a coal mine.
Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a coal mine,
but there's no cat. Theology is looking for a black cat
in a coal mine, there's no cat, and someone yells out,
"Look! There he is!"
This joke seems to epitomize a particular and reputable way
of thinking about the trajectory of Western intellectual
history, one according to which the West moves from an
indefensibly theological frame of mind to a confusedly
metaphysical one, and then finally to a respectably rational
one. This is the standard story we tell ourselves about the
rise of "modernity" and it attaches a particular
significance to the period I study-the early modern period,
and particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in
Europe. It was at this moment, we are told, that a titanic
shift occurred in the way that European Christians thought
about moral and political philosophy. In the previous
period, they had approached these subjects from a
fundamentally theologized perspective: the way you answered
questions about how we should live was to ask the question,
"How does God wish for us to live?" However, in this period,
under the influence of a set of circumstances and events-the
rise of the new science, philosophical skepticism, and the
carnage of the religious wars-Western theorists turned away
from religion, regarding its claims as lacking authority,
and also as being fundamentally dangerous and inimical to
peace.
The result of all of this is supposed to have been something
called the "Great Separation," a decision made by Western
theorists to sequester religion from moral and political
theory and to allow those disciplines to get on according to
their own rational criteria without any recourse to
religious claims. This is an old and established view, but
it's one that has been defended recently with a great deal
of intensity. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks
and the global convulsions that followed, a number of
Western scholars have devoted themselves to the task of
recovering and highlighting the secular pedigree of our most
central moral and political commitments, defending them
against what they perceive to be a very different,
retrograde and reactionary set of religious impulses which
are to be resisted.
For a number of these scholars, this story, this way of
cutting the deck, is not just about philosophy, and it's not
just about historiography. It's also about politics. Their
writings bear the unmistakable mark of the long controversy
over the Iraq war, and they invoke the "secularization"
narrative in order to insist, not only that we in the West
should hold fast to our secularism, but also that because of
the secular character of our values, we should not expect
them to travel well. If liberal democratic norms depend for
their coherence on a secularized world view that assigns
religion no role in moral and political philosophy, then
these norms will not be able to take root in cultures that
have not experienced their own secularizing moment. The
West on this account is once again exceptional, but for a
new and different reason. As a result of a contingent set of
circumstances in early-modern European history, we managed
to emerge with a precious, fragile and utterly idiosyncratic
moral and political inheritance. It follows that while we
should fiercely defend this inheritance at home, we should
emphatically not attempt to export it abroad.
Now, it may or may not be a good idea to try to export our
values abroad. That is an argument for another day. But what
I want very much to insist on is this: If it is a bad idea
to try to do this, it is not because the central commitments
of Western modernity emerged out of a secularizing moment.
Nothing, I want to suggest, could be further from the truth.
Many, if not most, of our most fundamental commitments
emerged instead out of a deeply theologized context, and
were explicitly justified in the first instance on the basis
of religious claims. Today, I want to talk about one of
these-religious toleration.
RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE
I've chosen to focus on religious tolerance not only because
of its obvious importance, but also because there's a good
intuitive reason for supposing that it does indeed rely on
secularization, or at least on religious skepticism. If one
is certain of the truth of a particular religious belief,
then surely one is more likely to be intolerant toward those
who don't conform to it. Conversely, if one has doubts or is
convinced that the whole religious enterprise is nonsensical
in the first place, then surely one will be more likely to
tolerate religious diversity. As I say, there's a surface
plausibility to this view, but it doesn't take all that much
to see through it.
As we well know, it certainly does not follow that because
one is skeptical about religious truth, or denies the
religious perspective outright, one is, therefore, committed
to toleration. History provides far too many counter-
examples. Indeed, in the early modern period religious
skeptics were often the least interested in tolerating
religious dissent. If the whole business is nonsense anyway,
why not pick one politically useful sort of nonsense and
insist that everyone subscribe to it to maintain the peace?
It was not an uncommon argument. But I'm more interested in
why committed early modern Christians found themselves
arguing in favor of religious toleration, and doing so on
religious grounds.
I want to focus on one of their arguments in particular-the
one that I take to have been the most important and
influential. It's a strange argument to modern ears, not
only because of its explicitly religious character, but also
because it understood toleration to require not the
separation of church and state, but rather their union. In
order to set the stage, I first have to say a bit about the
cultural and intellectual phenomenon out of which it
emerged: the "Hebrew Revival" of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. . . .
Read the Templeton Lecture in full at:
http://www.fpri.org/pubs/2011/201105.nelson.religiousoriginsofreligioustolerance.html
For texts and videos of previous Templeton Lectures, visit:
http://www.fpri.org/education/templetonlecture.html
----------------------------------------------------------
Copyright Foreign Policy Research Institute
(http://www.fpri.org/).
The 14th Annual Templeton Lecture on
Religion and World Affairs
THE RELIGIOUS ORIGINS OF RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE
by Eric Nelson
Philosophy is looking for a black cat in a coal mine.
Metaphysics is looking for a black cat in a coal mine,
but there's no cat. Theology is looking for a black cat
in a coal mine, there's no cat, and someone yells out,
"Look! There he is!"
This joke seems to epitomize a particular and reputable way
of thinking about the trajectory of Western intellectual
history, one according to which the West moves from an
indefensibly theological frame of mind to a confusedly
metaphysical one, and then finally to a respectably rational
one. This is the standard story we tell ourselves about the
rise of "modernity" and it attaches a particular
significance to the period I study-the early modern period,
and particularly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in
Europe. It was at this moment, we are told, that a titanic
shift occurred in the way that European Christians thought
about moral and political philosophy. In the previous
period, they had approached these subjects from a
fundamentally theologized perspective: the way you answered
questions about how we should live was to ask the question,
"How does God wish for us to live?" However, in this period,
under the influence of a set of circumstances and events-the
rise of the new science, philosophical skepticism, and the
carnage of the religious wars-Western theorists turned away
from religion, regarding its claims as lacking authority,
and also as being fundamentally dangerous and inimical to
peace.
The result of all of this is supposed to have been something
called the "Great Separation," a decision made by Western
theorists to sequester religion from moral and political
theory and to allow those disciplines to get on according to
their own rational criteria without any recourse to
religious claims. This is an old and established view, but
it's one that has been defended recently with a great deal
of intensity. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks
and the global convulsions that followed, a number of
Western scholars have devoted themselves to the task of
recovering and highlighting the secular pedigree of our most
central moral and political commitments, defending them
against what they perceive to be a very different,
retrograde and reactionary set of religious impulses which
are to be resisted.
For a number of these scholars, this story, this way of
cutting the deck, is not just about philosophy, and it's not
just about historiography. It's also about politics. Their
writings bear the unmistakable mark of the long controversy
over the Iraq war, and they invoke the "secularization"
narrative in order to insist, not only that we in the West
should hold fast to our secularism, but also that because of
the secular character of our values, we should not expect
them to travel well. If liberal democratic norms depend for
their coherence on a secularized world view that assigns
religion no role in moral and political philosophy, then
these norms will not be able to take root in cultures that
have not experienced their own secularizing moment. The
West on this account is once again exceptional, but for a
new and different reason. As a result of a contingent set of
circumstances in early-modern European history, we managed
to emerge with a precious, fragile and utterly idiosyncratic
moral and political inheritance. It follows that while we
should fiercely defend this inheritance at home, we should
emphatically not attempt to export it abroad.
Now, it may or may not be a good idea to try to export our
values abroad. That is an argument for another day. But what
I want very much to insist on is this: If it is a bad idea
to try to do this, it is not because the central commitments
of Western modernity emerged out of a secularizing moment.
Nothing, I want to suggest, could be further from the truth.
Many, if not most, of our most fundamental commitments
emerged instead out of a deeply theologized context, and
were explicitly justified in the first instance on the basis
of religious claims. Today, I want to talk about one of
these-religious toleration.
RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE
I've chosen to focus on religious tolerance not only because
of its obvious importance, but also because there's a good
intuitive reason for supposing that it does indeed rely on
secularization, or at least on religious skepticism. If one
is certain of the truth of a particular religious belief,
then surely one is more likely to be intolerant toward those
who don't conform to it. Conversely, if one has doubts or is
convinced that the whole religious enterprise is nonsensical
in the first place, then surely one will be more likely to
tolerate religious diversity. As I say, there's a surface
plausibility to this view, but it doesn't take all that much
to see through it.
As we well know, it certainly does not follow that because
one is skeptical about religious truth, or denies the
religious perspective outright, one is, therefore, committed
to toleration. History provides far too many counter-
examples. Indeed, in the early modern period religious
skeptics were often the least interested in tolerating
religious dissent. If the whole business is nonsense anyway,
why not pick one politically useful sort of nonsense and
insist that everyone subscribe to it to maintain the peace?
It was not an uncommon argument. But I'm more interested in
why committed early modern Christians found themselves
arguing in favor of religious toleration, and doing so on
religious grounds.
I want to focus on one of their arguments in particular-the
one that I take to have been the most important and
influential. It's a strange argument to modern ears, not
only because of its explicitly religious character, but also
because it understood toleration to require not the
separation of church and state, but rather their union. In
order to set the stage, I first have to say a bit about the
cultural and intellectual phenomenon out of which it
emerged: the "Hebrew Revival" of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. . . .
Read the Templeton Lecture in full at:
http://www.fpri.org/pubs/2011/201105.nelson.religiousoriginsofreligioustolerance.html
For texts and videos of previous Templeton Lectures, visit:
http://www.fpri.org/education/templetonlecture.html
----------------------------------------------------------
Copyright Foreign Policy Research Institute
(http://www.fpri.org/).
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