Corporate Religious Liberty in Church Teachings

Abstract

This chapter searches for normative resources in modern ecclesial statements on (corporate) religious liberty and assesses their contributions to the contemporary American debate. While the Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches have well-developed theories of religious freedom, their understanding of corporate religious liberty requires development with regard to the appropriate moral and legal subjects involved. On this point, the churches overlook ethically salient differences between group-types, precariously straddle the divide between individual and group rights, and reduce the Church into a mere voluntary association. The chapter concludes that churches must draw upon the Christian tradition’s group ontology so that they might understand to whom or to what corporate religious liberty applies.