Article excerpt

“While there is a long tradition among political theorists and legal scholars who insist that liberalism is defined above all by a neutrality regarding conceptions of the Good, many thinkers — both critics of liberalism, as well as its most enthusiastic proponents — have insisted that liberalism itself embraces and promotes a deeply-held set of substantive commitments. These commitments arise from liberalism’s fundamental basis upon individual liberty, understood as liberty as a right to believe, act, or choose as one wishes where (to cite the proto-liberal, Thomas Hobbes) ‘the law is silent.’ The liberal political theorist Stephen Macedo has forcefully — and, with honesty and forthrightness, admirably — acknowledged that the liberal commitment to this form of freedom does not, finally, take the form of neutrality, but rather an active society-building and culture-shaping effort that molds the soul of man under liberalism. In a 1998 article entitled ‘Transformative Constitutionalism and the Case of Religion: Defending the Moderate Hegemony of Liberalism’ [in Political Theory 26, no. 1 (February 1998): 69], Macedo has argued that liberal constitutionalism is, and rightly should be, ‘a pervasively educational order,’ and not one that is neutral toward various forms of education. Among the shaping powers it does and should employ is the effort to diminish, weaken, attenuate, and even reduce if not outright eliminate non-liberal groups and entities within the liberal order. At a most basic level, he argues, liberal law and practice aims to ‘shape people to help ensure that [liberal] freedom is what they want.’ That is, far from being ‘neutral’ or ‘indifferent’ about whether liberal freedom is, or is not, the proper way to understand and animate human life and choices, Macedo acknowledges that a liberal order appropriately and actively seeks to ‘make men free’ in accordance with the liberal understanding of freedom. To do this, it must not only order the public realm in accordance with full access to liberal rights to free and unencumbered choice — it must, he writes, also ‘constitute the private realm in its own interest.’ Of central concern, then, is an area that many regard as liberalism’s attitude of indifferent toleration: religious belief, and the ways that religious belief is shaped and guided within the private associative realm of the family and church. Macedo argues that liberalism can ill-afford to leave this vital area untouched by liberalism’s soul-shaping and comprehensively educative efforts, and highlights, in particular, the success that liberalism has had in re-casting Catholicism in its image.

“Macedo points, among other pieces of evidence, to the ‘ritual which Catholic judges and candidates for president have had to pass through in their quest for higher office.’ Citing Sanford Levinson, he approvingly notes that ‘Catholics have effectively “been forced to proclaim the practical meaninglessness” of their religious convictions as a condition of being allowed to serve.’ Macedo suggests that ‘such rituals are bound to be educative’ — that they have a shaping power for society at large. In particular, Catholics are effectively disallowed, through disapproval and dismissiveness of the liberal order, from a robust opportunity to express the substance of Catholic teachings, and even from a receptive hearing, by the order shaped by the deepest liberal assumptions. To the extent that Catholicism rejects the liberal conception of freedom and the basic anthropological assumption of radical autonomy on which it is based, Catholicism stands as a non-liberal competitor that must be effectively overcome by liberal philosophy and liberal pedagogy. Public claims of the validity of its belief must be effectively (perhaps legally, but most often informally) disallowed, and rather may be retained only as forms of private belief. As Macedo argues, ‘the healthy course of things in a healthy liberal democracy will be that beliefs in tension with fundamental liberal democratic commitments will be diminished in importance.’

“Moreover, such belief must be limited in its scope of influence not only in the public realm, but even as a shaping force in private life. For example, Macedo argues that liberalism cannot be indifferent to the education of children — liberalism has a civic interest in the shaping of properly liberal souls, ones that will ensure that it is ‘freedom that they want.’ Thus, ‘if parents want their children always to be guided solely by sectarian religious teachings both in politics and elsewhere then their view of good citizenship is at odds with the liberal one. We have good reasons to hope that there will be fewer families raising such children in the future.’ Far from offering a ‘level playing field’ of belief, per claims for liberal neutrality, Macedo forthrightly acknowledges that liberalism actively seeks to advance a view of freedom that is distinct from that view of ‘true freedom’ — a freedom in conformity to the Truth. . . . With refreshing honesty, Macedo acknowledges that liberalism seeks to be hegemonic, fostering, among other things, a ‘certain religious homogeneity’ that finally accords with the definition of freedom at the heart of liberalism.”

— from Patrick J. Deneen, “Religious Liberty after Liberalism: Re-thinking Dignitatis Humanae in an Age of Illiberal Liberalism,” in Communio (Summer-Fall, 2013)

Related reading and listening

Related reading and listening

Links to posts and programs featuring D. C. Schindler:

Links to posts and programs featuring Junius Johnson;

Links to posts and programs featuring Reinhard Huetter;

Links to posts and programs featuring Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P.:

Links to posts and programs featuring Louis Markos:

Links to posts and programs featuring William C. Hackett:

Links to posts and programs featuring Thomas Albert Howard:

Links to posts and programs featuring Thomas Pfau:

Links to posts and programs featuring Hans Boersma:

Links to posts and programs featuring Bruce Hindmarsh:

Links to posts and programs featuring J. Budziszewski:

Links to posts and programs featuring Steve L. Porter:

Links to posts and programs featuring Norman Wirzba:

Links to posts and programs featuring Timothy Larsen:

Links to posts and programs featuring Bruce Herman:

Links to posts and programs featuring Rod Dreher:

Links to posts and programs featuring Kevin J. Vanhoozer:

Links to posts and programs featuring Esther Lightcap Meek:

Links to posts and programs featuring Alan Jacobs:

Links to posts and programs featuring Kimbell Kornu:

Links to posts and programs featuring David Lyle Jeffrey:

Links to posts and programs featuring David Setran:

Links to posts and programs featuring Peter Bouteneff:

Links to posts and programs featuring Francis J. Beckwith:

Links to posts and programs featuring Marianne Wright:

Links to posts and programs featuring David W. Fagerberg:

Links to posts and programs featuring William T. Cavanaugh:

Links to posts and programs featuring Michael Ward:

Links to posts and programs featuring Michael Dominic Taylor:

Links to posts and programs featuring Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung:

Links to posts and programs featuring Robin Phillips:

Links to posts and programs featuring Jonathan McIntosh:

Links to posts and programs featuring Marian Schwartz:

Links to posts and programs featuring Andrew Kaethler:

Links to posts and programs featuring Donald B. Kraybill:

Links to posts and programs featuring Thomas Storck:

Links to posts and programs featuring Jonathan Chaplin:

Links to posts and programs featuring James W. Skillen:

Links to posts and programs featuring Richard Stivers:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mark Regnerus:

Links to posts and programs featuring Emma Mason:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mark Noll:

Links to posts and programs featuring David Ney:

Links to posts and programs featuring Greg Peters:

Links to posts and programs featuring David I. Smith:

Links to posts and programs featuring Jason Paone:

Links to posts and programs featuring Kelly M. Kapic:

Links to posts and programs featuring Eric O. Jacobsen:

Links to posts and programs featuring Jessica Hooten Wilson:

Links to posts and programs featuring James Turner:

Links to posts and programs featuring Matthew Rubery:

Links to posts and programs featuring Simon Oliver:

Links to posts and programs featuring Jason Blakely:

Links to posts and programs featuring Kathryn Wehr:

Links to posts and programs featuring Holly Ordway:

Links to posts and programs featuring Paul Tyson:

Links to posts and programs featuring Matthew D. Stewart:

Links to posts and programs featuring David Sehat:

Links to posts and programs featuring John Durham Peters:

Links to posts and programs featuring Oliver O'Donovan:

Links to posts and programs featuring Nigel Biggar:

Links to posts and programs featuring Margaret Harper McCarthy:

Links to posts and programs featuring Andrew Paul Davison:

Links to posts and programs featuring Alison Milbank:

Links to posts and programs featuring Brian R. Brock:

Links to posts and programs featuring Scott Newstok:

Links to posts and programs featuring Fiona Hughes:

Links to posts and programs featuring R. Jared Staudt:

Links to posts and programs featuring Grant R. Brodrecht:

Links to posts and programs featuring Antonio López:

Links to posts and programs featuring Brent Hull:

Links to posts and programs featuring Matthew B. Crawford:

Links to posts and programs featuring Kerry McCarthy:

Links to posts and programs featuring Robert P. George:

Links to posts and programs featuring Christine Rosen:

Links to posts and programs featuring Scott Cairns:

Links to posts and programs featuring Diana Pavlac Glyer:

Links to posts and programs featuring O. Carter Snead:

Links to posts and programs featuring Steven D. Smith:

Links to posts and programs featuring Jeremy Beer:

Links to posts and programs featuring James K. A. Smith:

Links to posts and programs featuring Richard Weikart:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mark Evan Bonds:

Links to posts and programs featuring Perry L. Glanzer:

Links to posts and programs featuring Dana Gioia:

Links to posts and programs featuring Thomas E. Bergler:

Links to posts and programs featuring Susan Srigley:

Links to posts and programs featuring J.A.C. Redford:

Links to posts and programs featuring Carl Elliott:

Links to posts and programs featuring Victor Lee Austin:

Links to posts and programs featuring Sørina Higgins:

Links to posts and programs featuring Steve Wilkens:

Links to posts and programs featuring Gilbert Meilaender:

Links to posts and programs featuring Martin X. Moleski:

Links to posts and programs featuring Brendan Sweetman:

Links to posts and programs featuring Allan C. Carlson:

Links to posts and programs featuring Jason M. Baxter:

Links to posts and programs featuring Barrett Fisher II:

Links to posts and programs featuring Paul Weston:

Links to posts and programs featuring Steven Knepper:

Links to posts and programs featuring Susan M. Felch:

Links to posts and programs featuring Fred Turner:

Links to posts and programs featuring Matthew Dickerson:

Links to posts and programs featuring Jack R. Baker:

Links to posts and programs featuring W. Bradford Wilcox:

Links to posts and programs featuring Bill Vitek:

Links to posts and programs featuring Adam K. Webb:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mark Bauerlein:

Links to posts and programs featuring Felicia Wu Song:

Links to posts and programs featuring Joseph E. Davis:

Links to posts and programs featuring Thaddeus Kozinski:

Links to posts and programs featuring Craig M. Gay:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mark T. Mitchell:

Links to posts and programs featuring Karen Dieleman:

Links to posts and programs featuring Tim Clydesdale:

Links to posts and programs featuring J. Mark Bertrand:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mathew Levering:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mark G. Malvasi:

Links to posts and programs featuring Kirk Farney:

Links to posts and programs featuring Bradley J. Birzer:

Links to posts and programs featuring Ralph C. Wood:

Links to posts and programs featuring Paul Heintzman:

Links to posts and programs featuring Gil Bailie:

Links to posts and programs featuring Zygmunt Bauman:

Links to posts and programs featuring Matthew Lee Anderson:

Links to posts and programs featuring Mike Aquilina:

Links to posts and programs featuring Bishop Robert Barron:

Links to posts and programs featuring Frederick Buechner:

Links to posts and programs featuring Jeffrey Bilbro:

Links to posts and programs featuring James A. Herrick:

Links to posts and programs featuring Andrew Wilson:

Links to posts and programs featuring Susan Cain:

Links to posts and programs featuring Marilyn McEntyre:

Links to posts and programs featuring Andrew Spencer:

Links to posts and programs featuring Albert Borgmann:

Links to posts and programs featuring Catherine Prescott:

Links to posts and programs featuring Maggie M. Jackson:

Links to posts and programs featuring Garret Keizer:

Links to posts and programs featuring Andy Crouch:

Links to posts and programs featuring Kyle Hughes:

Links to posts and programs featuring Philip G. Ryken:

Links to posts and programs featuring Eric Miller:

Links to posts and programs featuring Ted Prescott:

Links to posts and programs featuring Landon Loftin:

Links to posts and programs featuring Barry Hankins:

Links to posts and programs featuring Quentin Schultze:

Links to posts and programs featuring Dale Ahlquist:

Links to posts and programs featuring Paul Walker:

Links to posts and programs featuring Jason Peters:

Links to posts and programs featuring Fr. Damian Ference:

Links to lectures and commentary by Ken Myers: