Notes On Church And State

The comment thread to this post compels me to add a couple of additional points:

• Pithlord‘s slippery slope arguments about the consequences of not providing funding to Catholic hospitals that deny contraception is, I think, specious even by the standards of the genre (at least for a non-libertarian.) His argument consistently elides the distinction between religious institutions qua religious institutions and religious institutions providing secular services with state money. This distinction is, however, absolutely critical to most civil rights law, which distinguishes between truly private behavior and public services that are critical to the basic necessities of life–the state can prevent you from firing someone or denying someone an apartment because of their race or gender, but do not (and should not, and under the First Amendment in most cases cannot) force you to be friend with someone despite your racist or sexist beliefs, or from expressing such beliefs. Nothing about the belief that churches who provide essential public services on the public’s dime should adhere to general conditions that serve a legitimate public interest in any way logically leads to the belief that the state can stop Catholic churches from arguing against contraception from the pulpit, force the church to perform private marriage ceremonies against their will, etc.

• Perhaps the more important point here is that this is an excellent illustration that the separation of church and state, far from being an anti-religious principle, is (at least in countries where the basic stability of the state is not an issue) most important for serious religious believers and religious institutions. Although proponents of “faith-based” social programs presumably see themselves as being pro-religion, unless “pro-religion” means “getting more money particular religious institutions” as opposed to “preserving the integrity of religious thought,” they’re quite mistaken. Dilemmas like the one in the Connecticut case are inevitable when religious institutions fight for taxpayer money to perform secular functions. When it gives out money, the state is likely to insist that institutions who perform functions for the government conform to the state’s rules. In my judgment, this is usually proper, but in any case it is also inevitable. Religious institutions that seek state money to perform secular functions will have to face choices between receiving money and consistently adhering to the principles of their faith, and the money will be a corrupting influence in many cases. Matt implies here that it’s unusual for an atheist to have wishy-washy views on church and state issues; this is probably true, but in a way that’s rational. I grew up in an Establishment Clause-free country, which meant signing two national anthems with “God” in them, having the Lord’s Prayer intoned at student assemblies, etc. This “ceremonial deism” doesn’t really bother me much; nothing about leads to serious thought about religion–it’s essentially empty words. This kind of thing would offend me much more, I think, if religion was a serious and important part of my life (and invoking God as a political prop–as in its insertion into the Pledge of Allegiance–would be considerably more offensive.) Similarly, there are times when I think that if the only way to get reactionaries to cough up more money for social services is to funnel the money through churches I can live with that–but I wouldn’t feel that way if preserving the character or religious institutions was important to me. (There are serious problems, of course, with agnostics and members of minority religions facing various forms of exclusion in strongly Christian parts of the country, but I serious doubt that whether, say, religious prayers are read over the school P.A. effects this much one way or the other.) A rigorous application of the Establishment clause is ultimately if anything more important to religious believers–especially believers who believe in things that are contrary to majoritarian opinion–than they are to skeptics.