While I consider myself a supporter of school choice, I am a bit leery of framing the argument for vouchers in terms of parental rights. Certainly parents do have the right to control the education of their children, as established by cases like Pierce and Yoder, but I've always understood this right as an example of negative liberty -- i.e., parents have the right to prevent the government, under most circumstances, from dictating the setting of their children's education. What Rick's admittedly powerful argument seeks to do (see his post and accompanying article, below), in my view, is turn this right into a positive liberty -- i.e., parents have the right to force the government to equip them with the means to educate their children in a setting of their choice. While, as a policy matter, I may look favorably on this outcome, I'm hesitant to endorse the means by which Rick seems to take us there.
My hesitation is difficult to articulate, but I think it has three aspects:
First, calling for the expansion of unenumerated constitutional rights is a path not to be lightly embarked upon, for obvious reasons.
Second, while parental prerogatives, especially freedom from government interference in the inculcation of religious values, are undoubtedly non-negotiable elements of subsidiarity and the Church's broader social teaching, I perceive a danger if we too readily adopt the individualist, autonomy-driven discourse of the surrounding legal culture, even though we may reflexively think that the individual autonomy of the parent is a good thing.
Third, as has been widely commented on elsewhere, rights-based discourse lends itself to a zero-sum contest of absolute power claims, and once certain claims are recognized, there is no going back. In this regard, parental rights, in their extreme form, could actually make pursuit of the common good more difficult by reducing our ability to balance competing, valid claims to scarce resources. Put more simply, there might be a good reason for a school district strapped for cash and struggling to maintain the vitality of its public schools to resist the blanket and/or immediate implementation of vouchers. But once we understand vouchers as a non-negotiable aspect of religious liberty, the school district's hands are tied, and the common good may effectively take a back seat to the parents' unfettered and constitutionally mandated autonomy.
I guess I'd prefer to let school choice be embraced or rejected by the people on the merits, not enshrined by the courts, tempting as the prospect might be.
In the sidebar, I have posted two of my publications dealing with school choice. The first, Racial Segregation in American Churches and its Implications for School Vouchers, analyzes the impact that the segregated state of Christianity in America might have on any widespread implementation of school vouchers. Basically, I suggest that, to the extent voucher money is made available with few strings attached, churches that have not established their own schools will have the incentive to do so, allowing more students the opportunity to select a school that is affiliated with the church they attend. In a relatively recent survey, 90% of whites said that their congregations had few or no blacks, and 73% of blacks said that their congregations had few or no whites. In light of these statistics, I wonder whether aligning educational affiliation more closely with religious affiliation is necessarily a good thing, at least in terms of racial diversity. Catholic schools in the inner city have been at the forefront of integrating student bodies, I realize, but up until now they have been competing primarily against failing public schools, not against an array of start-up schools operated by Protestant churches. (Tom Berg argues that my concern is somewhat misplaced in his article, Race Relations and Modern Church-State Relations, 43 B.C. L. Rev. 1009 (2002).)
The second piece, Public Opinion and the Culture Wars: The Case of School Vouchers, reviews a recent book by one of the school voucher pioneers, Terry Moe, and applauds what I view as his middle-ground approach to school choice. He favors vouchers on a limited basis for financially needy students. Moe crafts his policy recommendations based in significant part on public opinion data, and I posit that such an approach may hold promise for some of our more polarized "culture war" debates.
I agree with Rick's clarification, assuming that Pope John Paul II, in Dignitatis Humanae, was not asking for the government to play a role in restraining religious communities from engaging in practices that could be construed as "dishonorable or unworthy." After all, modern liberalism's notions of honor and worthiness might not leave much room at all for evangelization efforts. If we're going to unleash state power to restrain proselytization, I still think it should be limited to clear cases of tangible harm like financial fraud or physical coercion. To the extent that the Pope was simply asking for religious communities to comport themselves in a worthy manner -- and was not licensing the state to regulate proselytization based on its own self-serving interpretation of infinitely malleable terms -- the Pope's statement embodies the "marketplace of ideas" approach to proselytizing. We certainly can and should employ tools of moral suasion and condemnation when religious communities cross the line of decency in their recruitment efforts, but we should be extremely hesitant in asking the government to give our moral judgment the force of law.
Rick's post ("Conversion bans in India") is directly relevant to our own legal and intellectual landscape, not just India's. Even in our society, to accuse someone of proselytism packs a powerful pejorative punch. I believe that this stems from our modern tendency to view religious belief as either a facet of one's cultural identity (e.g., "he's Irish-Catholic" or "he was raised as a Southern Baptist") or as a simple lifestyle preference (e.g., see most analyses of the "megachurch" movement). It is the undeniable mark of a fundamentalist to be caught speaking of religious belief in terms of claims as to ultimate truth. If religion is not to be understood as the quest for truth, then what could possibly be the justification for seeking to invade another individual's most private sphere of autonomy in hopes of prompting a switch in culture or lifestyle, especially when the switch concerns a matter that is so potentially divisive and inflammatory?
I devoted one of my law & religion classes to proselytism, and the direction of the discussion was eye-opening. I offered the hypothetical of a classmate approaching them in the cafeteria to invite them to church and talk about Jesus; the class was split between viewing the classmate as a relationally stunted cultural imperalist and as a deluded zealot. When I asked what might motivate such person to "witness" about his faith, it was not until the fifth or sixth possibility that someone suggested, "He might believe his faith is actually true." If we view religious belief as potentially true or false, proselytism takes on a entirely new gloss, but we rarely view religious belief in those terms.
Indeed, even Rick's post included some eyebrow-raising sentiment, as he concedes that:
Many reasonable people, in many religious traditions, have expressed concerns about aggressive and otherwise unworthy "proselytization" efforts. And, many of us might concede that a government could have a common-good interest in taking steps to expose such efforts, in order to protect the freedom-of-conscience of its citizens.
My question is, what exactly is an "aggressive" or "otherwise unworthy" proselytization effort? And who do we trust to identify such efforts? And what should we want the government to do about them? In many countries, I know that materially assisting non-Christians at the same time you tell them the story of Christianity is viewed as an unfair advantage in the contest of religious ideas. But for the witnessing Christian, such a link is non-negotiable. This may be my upbringing as an evangelical coming to the fore, but barring outright fraud or physical coercion, I'm concerned that, if we concede that some proselytizing is legitimate and some is not, we've given up way too much ground.
Admittedly, the American legal system is not on the verge of following India's path on this subject, as our robust tradition of religious liberty will most likely maintain space for the "Jesus freaks" and "moonies" among us. But without a doubt, it is a culturally marginalized -- in many sectors, despised -- space that they occupy.
In an editorial today, the Denver Post weighs in on Kerry's "Catholic problem," lamenting the fact that certain elements of the Church's hierarchy seem to be upsetting the nice public/private distinction laid out by John Kennedy in regards to his faith and public office. In the Post's view, these elements "risk reawakening the fear among non-Catholics about whether the official acts of Catholics in office might be dictated by the Vatican." So if a priest or bishop calls on a Catholic public official to take seriously Church teachings on matters of public import, they have no one to blame but themselves when the inevitable (and presumably justified, in the Post's view) anti-Catholic backlash comes.
And as if religious stereotyping was not enough, the Post decides to engage in a bit of confused scriptural interpretation, suggesting that the whole problem can be solved by remembering "a much earlier statement on the separate roles of church and state: 'Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.'"
It's all perfectly clear now: render unto God whatever you do in your private time; everything else is Caesar's.
Martin F. Grace, a professor at Georgia State, emailed me a thoughtful contribution to our continuing conversation regarding Kerry's "Catholic problem":
I think one can have a freedom of conscience that might allow one to dissent from church teaching while one is attempting to discern the truth. I think this is what Sen. Kerry may have been referring to when he asserted his right to have a freedom to dissent.
But, Professor Grace points out, the freedom to dissent is not unfettered, at least for those who take their Catholic identities seriously:
I think the issue for me is that I can dissent and I can earnestly attempt to figure out what my conscience is telling me, but I do not campaign against the positions the church takes. It might be a sin in the classic sense to make people (with imperfectly formed consciences) believe that it is ok to do action X because other famous Catholics do x. In the old days the word scandal is used to describe this type of behavior. I am not a scholar of Vatican II ( I just lived through it as a kid), but I can not believe that the teachings of Vatican II actually gives one the unconstrained right to dissent --especially if it flies in the face of a long held truth or a Bishop's teaching.
The trick, of course, will be to identify the point when someone actually is engaged in a "campaign against the positions the church takes." I assume that Kerry would insist that he is simply carving out space for individuals to maintain their own freedom of conscience, rather than actively subverting long-held truths. Obviously, many observers will find that hard to swallow.
My reluctance to embrace Duncan Frissell's second-guessing of Kerry's faith (see "Kerry's Faith as Pretense?," below) has prompted reader reaction on both sides of the debate. Patrick H. Stiehm writes to note his agreement with my comments and to remind us that entering into another individual's mind and conscience in the mode of judgment "is God's place not ours, even if we happen to be a bishop." Mr. Stiehm notes that he is "very uncomfortable with the whole tone that the debate over Kerry's Catholicism is taking," but he suspects "it is only going to intensify."
On the other hand, Frank Wilson asks "what exactly does [Kerry's] faith consist in?" He explains:
I can well understand how a Catholic politician might reluct to vote for making abortion illegal. But to positively support abortion in every way possible is quite another matter. Kerry's record is quite simply pro-abortion. Moreover, it appears he was never granted an annulment of his first marriage. . . . And I think it should be possible to distinguish between a profession of faith and a pretension of it. Especially when a person does not publicly adhere to the rules of the faith in question.
My disagreement with Mr. Wilson may center simply on how we frame the inquiry. Should the policy positions of purportedly Catholic politicians cause us to challenge the politicians' standing within the community of faith, or should they cause us to challenge the sincerity of the politicians' faith itself? I still believe that the former is the more appropriate avenue, and that the latter path not only verges on the presumptuous, but also is largely unnecessary as a means of speaking truth to power.
Mr. Wilson also challenges my assertion that Bush, not just Kerry, is guilty of religious posturing for political gain. I admit that the posturing is more obvious by Kerry because he does not naturally (from what I can tell) make his faith a visible part of his public role, whereas Bush has made his faith a thread that runs throughout his public identity. And while much of Bush's religious imagery is unobjectionable, even inspiring (I'm thinking of his post-9/11 speech to Congress), that does not negate the political component. And in particular contexts like the marriage amendment, I maintain that posturing is the appropriate term, even if I have no doubt that Bush's underlying faith commitment is sincere.
Duncan Frissell emailed me with a decidely more cynical view of Kerry's Catholic problem (see earlier posts), wondering whether Kerry actually is a "cynical nonbeliver." Over at the Technoptimist blog Duncan pursues this point further:
Kerry has said that, as an elected official, he must separate his personal religious views from his actions as a legislator and that it is not 'appropriate in the United States for a legislator to legislate personal religious beliefs for the rest of the country.'
But, I assume, it is OK for a communist legislator to legislate his personal communist beliefs for the rest of the country?
Why don't faithless Catholic politicians simply say that they are imposing their beliefs on us but that those beliefs are not the beliefs of their church; that (in fact) they don't share most of the beliefs of their church; and that they only maintain the pretense of faith for crass political advantage.
Duncan is undoubtedly correct that there's an element of crass political calculation in the religious posturing of Kerry -- as well as Bush, I submit -- but I'm hesitant to head down the road of second-guessing the sincerity of anyone's -- even a politician's -- professed faith commitment. (Goodness knows folks would have been justified in doing the same to me at various points in my life.) I'd rather take politicians at their word, and keep the debate to the consistency (or lack thereof) between their actions/policy positions and the core tenets of the particular faith tradition they claim.
Last week I helped lead a faculty-student discussion on gay marriage, and one trend in the participants' comments struck me as worth noting. Somewhat to my surprise, among both liberals and conservatives, the label "marriage" really does seem to matter. Noting that opposition to gay marriage is often intertwined with religious conceptions of marriage, I floated the idea that government should get out of the marriage business entirely, recognize only civil unions, and leave "marriage" to religious and other intermediate communities to define and implement. There was widespread resistance to this idea. Participants had some difficulty articulating why it matters, but almost all of them conceded that they do not simply want a certain set of legal rights and privileges surrounding their state-sanctioned relationship; they want to be married, and they want to be married in the eyes of the state, not simply some subcommunity of the state. I'm not sure what significance to take from this, other than that it underscores the difficulty in distilling the debate to a question of comparable bundles of rights. There seems to be an inescapable moral dimension to the recognition of gay marriage, regardless of whether one opposes or supports the concept.
It seems that the New York Times covers religion from three different angles: 1) ignoring it completely; 2) portraying religious believers as though they have two heads (both of which are devoid of a brain, of course); or 3) portraying religious beliefs as relics propped up to function as tools of institutional self-advancement and/or oppression. Today the Times jumps in on the Kerry as Catholic coverage, and seems to have opted for angle #3. In a news article (not an op/ed, mind you), the paper of record gives us these nuggets:
"President Kennedy had to overcome accusations from non-Catholics that he would follow the bidding of the pope. Now, Mr. Kerry faces accusations from some within his own church that he is not following the pope's bidding closely enough."
"The senator is aligned with his church on many social justice issues, including immigration, poverty, health care and the death penalty. But he diverges on the litmus issues, like abortion and stem cell research, that animate church conservatives and many in the hierarchy."
As we can now understand from the Times' insight, there is no cohesive web of beliefs, but simply a smorgasbord of pet causes, some favored by the liberals, some favored by conservatives. The Times also provides a quote from Rev. Drinan suggesting that the dispute centers simply on whether Kerry himself measures up as a Catholic, rather than on his public support for policies that contradict the moral anthropology on which the Church's body of teachings is based:
"Kennedy settled the problem that a Catholic couldn't become president . . . That's not an issue now. The issue with Kerry will be, is he good enough as a Catholic."
The article underscores the extent to which we tend to overlay our common understanding of partisan politics onto debates that transcend simple notions of power, strategy and self-interest. And while I'm confident that the Times is not particularly interested in delving more deeply into the issues at stake here, once again we see the need for greater public familiarity with moral anthropology.
Finally, the article makes it obvious that Kerry has no hesitation proceeding down the path he's laid out for himself. As an (admittedly unenthusiastic) supporter of his candidacy, I admit that he's not showing a lot of nuance or angst over the tension between his faith and his politics when he has his spokesperson say: "Senator Kerry is a person of faith, he's a practicing Catholic, and his religion is an important part of his life and of Teresa Heinz Kerry's life. And they've always recognized that separation between the public and the private."
