The Pursuit Of Neutrality

Abstract

Abstract Perhaps the most pervasive theme in modern judicial and academic discourse on the subject of religious freedom is “neutrality.” The Supreme Court has repeatedly insisted that government must be neutral both among religions and between religion and non religion. Scholars have offered myriad explications of the ideal of religious neutrality. Phillip Johnson’s observation exaggerates only slightly in describing the breadth of the consensus: “That in some sense the federal government and the states ought to be ‘neutral’ in religious matters is undisputed.” Without actually using the term, the preceding chapter has already discussed both the necessity and the futility of this quest for neutrality. The aspiration to neutrality can be understood as an effort to avoid or transcend the kind of theorizing that adopts or prefers in advance one of the competing religious or secular positions within a community and then allows other positions only as much freedom as the preferred position prescribes. As discussed, it is questionable whether this kind of preferred position theory can properly be regarded as a theory of “religious freedom” at all. Thus, neutrality is not merely one major theme among others, or one attractive theoretical option, but rather an essential theoretical requirement. A genuine theory of religious freedom, by this view, would of necessity be a “neutral” theory in the sense that it would not begin by adopting or favoring one of the competing religious or secular positions. Unfortunately, since every theory of religious freedom depends on background beliefs that will be derived from and compatible with one or some of those positions but not others, this sort of neutral theory also appears to be unattainable.