of Waldron: "Two-Way Translation: The Ethics of Engaging with Religious Contributions in Public Deliberation"

Waldron, Jeremy. 2010. "Two-Way Translation: The Ethics of Engaging with Religious Contributions in Public Deliberation" NYU

1.An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture

2.Two Sets of Concerns about Religious Interventions

• Ethics of response (to these evangelics) (2)
• some>these interventions are to reconstruct govt (dominionism) (3)
• prof Gushee (evangelic): right, yes it is impossible a less religiously pluralistic age, actually it should be under this constitution and we should reform our rhetoric and political practice accordingly since people fear from us” (4)
• “so long as there is due recognition of the multi-faith and secular aspects of our society and due recognition of the constitutional structure that responds to that, there is no particular reason for church people to refrain from participation in public life on the basis of their values”
• but some: these interventions are implicitly theocratic “implicit theocracy”
• some: it is inherently appropriate to adduce reasons for one’s political position that make no sense to and fail to resonate with large sections of the public (5)” “civility”
• 2 concerns of implicit theocracy and civility (civil intelligibility) ie: Rawls: incompatible wt public reason (6)
• “as a practicing Episcopalian” JJJ (7)

3. The Worry about Implicit Theocracy

• distinction between practical and theoretical authority (8)
• theoretical>a matter of expertise not ruling, not impose duties ie: a professor of economy not minister
• concern @ theocracy is about practical authority and this can be applied for the sort of interventions in the case of Roman Catholic intervention in abortion like “it should be illegal as the Pope says” but most religious interventions aren’t of this kind, rather they want prohibition “because it is wrong” (9)
• “there is nothing implicitly theocratic about drawing upon theoretical authority (in this case, church) so far as the bearing of religious principles on public policy is concerned.”   
• “people miss this because of a silly assumption that there is no such thing as expertise in the great moral and political issues that we face”
• “the assumption is that most of us would do better to follow what is said in this ancient book” (bible) (10)
•  “many of the religious interventions that people are concerned about are not scripturally based at all”
• “any claim about Jesus being Lord transcends this category of theoretical authority among humans. However, I think it also transcends any plausible claim about practical political authority as well.” (11)
•  claim: the moral force of religious propositions>follows>thereby subjecting ourselves to a sort of theocratic rule (WALDRON: this doesn’t follow) (12)
• “we long to obey the demands of our faith=of morality> actually one isn’t more offensive: “It is distinguished only from the analogous moral resolve by (what in the eyes of many people are) the weird beliefs Christians hold about the sources of moral insight.”

4.Addressing Religious Talk to Non-Believers 

•  “The real issue is not theocracy, it is intelligibility.”
• Claim: “people of faith should refrain from participating in public debate in terms that reflect their religious commitments. If we are not to turn democratic politics into a Babel of mutually incomprehensible assertions, maybe we should search for a common vocabulary and a set of premises that we can all converge on in political dialogue.” (12-3)
• “we must beware of exaggerating the deliberative character of modern politics”
• not neglect other respectable functions of a political statement may serve: bearing witness, explain himself ( sort of view, not persuading), preach to the choir
•  “Is the engagement of nonbelievers with something like the Evangelical Declaration necessarily a dialogue of the deaf?” (14) 2 phil. misconceptions make it seem so:
1. mutual understanding is an all-or-nothing businessÞ Nagel ethics of contributing to public justification: “It must be possible to present to others the basis of your own beliefs, so that once you have done so, they have what you have, and can arrive at a judgment on the same basis.” (Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy): this fails to characterize most episodes of mutual understanding: impatience, distraction, imperfect hearing, comprehension, hermeneutic, significance within my set of beliefs: “never exactly be my having what you have”, we aren’t identical search engines, not just logics but rhetoric
2.  “to assume that communication is really possible only between persons who share a common framework of concepts” (14): BUT NO, “we should not underestimate the ability of humans from disparate backgrounds to talk with one another,---”(15)Þ anyway, we deal with mutual intelligibility within a given culture, not incommensurability between cultures (modern ABD), also most is religious and others are familiar and have librariesJ so it isn’t that “they cannot possibly understand” about which there is something uncivil as they claimed (16) (17ie.political economy not easy to understand but cam be)**Karl Popper: the Myth of the Framework: In Defense of Science and Ratioanlity

5. Two-Way Translation

• Lincoln as hero of Rawls used a religious rationale in his Second Inaugural and Rawls said @ that it might not have violated “public reason as it applied in (Lincoln’s) day” and these “could surely be supported firmly by the values of public reason” <->translate into secular talk (18) “in terms of proper political values”
• Rawls: burden of this proviso fall on the religious speaker (19)
• Habermas: “requirement of translation must be conceived as a cooperative task in which the non-religious citizens must likewise participate) (link of Habermas) (19) then for him, the civility burdens of public reason is a a two-way street. (20)
•  It is not civil for secular citizens to strain not to understand what is being said or block out/refuse. “Or rather, a person can do that; people don’t have the obligation to listen to and grapple with everything that is said in public discourse. But then if they do turn a deaf ear, for whatever reason, to some of what is being said, they can hardly turn round and complain about the incivility of the speaker.” 

6. Religious Contributions as Immoderate

•  Last concern: antagonism, tension, being offended (20), lack of moderation (21)
•  “extreme moral expression spurred on by religious conviction is inherently inappropriate in politics, concerned with moral relativity and compromise” (22)
• example o Weber’s views on politics (22-3)

7. Conclusion

• misconception, misunderstanding of religious-based arguments in modern political theory by secular theorists (Rawls, Dworkin) “mostly a travesty”