The Role of Religious Ethics in Public Policy

Last updated on: August 10, 2013 at 8:45 am by Andre E. Johnson

The Role of Religious Ethics in Public Policy 2013-08-10T08:45:00-05:00 Andre E. Johnson

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It is not uncommon these days for some people to regard religion as an unwanted guest when people start discussing social ills and their resolution. They regard the role of religion when it advances a moral position in the public square as poisonous because it is often suspected of seeking to impose that position on everyone else without their consent. Unfortunately some religious bodies have earned this suspicion because of their attempts to control the public dimension through an enforced and reactionary moral code. Wars have been fought over religious ideology (even though there were usually more basic political and economic issues at stake which used religious symbolism to mask their real interests). But we have to get beyond the ‘religion or secularism’ dichotomy regarding moral values and to do so some basic points need to be made.

First, morality is part of every human life and society. No one would claim to live an entirely a-moral life or live in a society without some commonly accepted moral principles guiding its social policies. But morality does not belong solely to people with religious motivations. The power of the ethical is part of every human life. And it can arise from a variety of diverse sources, from religious to secular.

Second, religious conviction, the source of moral values for religious people, takes a variety of forms, even within the same religious tradition. Progressive and fundamentalist Christians, for example, would claim a common religious tradition but reach quite different moral positions on issues such as homosexuality, the limits of the free market, the rights of women, health care, and pacifism vs. just war. And of course there are multiple religious traditions, from those accepting Abrahamic monotheism, to, among others, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Baha’i, Unitarian, Confucian, Native American, and Wiccan forms of religion. There are also multiple shades of secularism, from the aggressively atheistic to the milder forms of agnosticism. So to rail against religiously grounded morality is like railing against the weather. It doesn’t specify the issues at stake. Weather is too general a term and does not help us to know what particular climatological conditions we are concerned with. Religions and religiously inspired morality came in a variety of forms and expressions. And third, the religious voice has as much right to speak in the democratic public square as any other voice. As the First Amendment reminds us, in addition to no establishment of religion, no restrictions (save for the public safety) shall be placed in the way of the free exercise of religious convictions.

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