12 September 2006
Pluralistic Democracy Protects Religious Freedom
Religious neutrality focus of Democracy Dialogues online discussion
Washington -- Men and women are moral agents with the freedom to make their own moral and religious choices, said Stephen V. Monsma, a political scientist and former Michigan state lawmaker, in a Democracy Dialogues webchat September 12.
Pluralism of religious belief is universal, Monsma asserted.
Even within the world’s great religions, such as Islam, Judaism and Christianity, Monsma said, there are different traditions or groups, and other minority religions always are present.
“If government is to be respectful of all believers and not favor one over the other,” Monsma said, “there should not be one state religion that is favored over all others.”
In the United States, where the First Amendment of the Constitution protects the separation of church and state, some Americans think the Supreme Court goes too far in enforcing the separation, but most agree that even the slightest violation of strict separation will lead to more serious violations in the future.
“Not everyone thinks or believes the same way, and this is especially true in regard to religion,” Monsma said. “Democracy is pluralism.” The task of a pluralist democracy, then, is to protect the freedom of all persons to practice their religious beliefs and to be neutral toward all religions, neither favoring nor disfavoring any particular religion or religious belief, he said.
Yet people often disagree on exactly what “government neutrality toward religion” means in concrete situations.
For example, most European governments stress cooperative efforts between church and state rather than separating them, often directly funding religious-based schools, according to Monsma.
Church-state separation, or government neutrality toward religion, is not necessarily based on a secular worldview, Monsma said. Under governmental religious neutrality, according to Monsma, religion is honored because no one is coerced to believe, or even pressured to believe, in anything.
The arrival of new immigrant groups does not change how the United States protects separation of church and state, Monsma said.
Problems can arise, however, if there are religious groups that have values that run counter to basic human rights. “Questions such as the rights of women could arise, in the case of a religious group that severely restricts the role of women in society,” Monsma suggested. “Or if a religious group should advocate violence, that too would raise problems.”
There is no legal requirement that a U.S. president must believe in God, Monsma said, and although the U.S. Constitution explicitly states that there can be no religious test for holding public office, there are also no laws prohibiting a political party that is founded on a religion or named after a religion, such as Christian Democratic parties in many European countries.
Yet no U.S. president ever has publicly stated he did not believe in God, added Monsma, who said public opinion polls regularly show most Americans stating that they would be unlikely to vote for an atheist president. “This no doubt grows out of the fact that the American people are a very religious people -- some 40 percent attend religious services every week and in a recent poll 84 percent reported they had prayed to God in the previous seven days.”
Governmental neutrality on matters of religion should be the goal of a government, Monsma said, and church-state separation is only one means to that goal rather than a goal or valued principle in its own right.
The global trend toward greater religious freedom, or neutrality on matters of religion, is a good thing, asserted Monsma, but there is still enough religious persecution around the world, with governments enforcing one religion over another, to cause concern.
“All persons, whether deeply religious themselves or not, should work for greater religious freedom. I am convinced doing so will, in the long run, lead to stronger, more robust religious faith and also stronger, more creative societies,” Monsma said.
Monsma is a research fellow at the Henry Institute for the Study of Religion and Politics at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a nonresident fellow at the Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Monsma served in the Michigan House of Representatives and state Senate.
The transcript of Monsma’s discussion and information on upcoming webchats are available on USINFO’s Webchat Station.
Democracy Dialogues is a global conversation addressing democratic governance through interactive public forums, readings, videos, photos and historical documents, with a new topic introduced every two months.
More information about the separation of church and state and freedom of religion is available on the USINFO Web site.
