This panel examines the role of religious speech as a force in public discourse. Religious belief, by its very nature, encourages adherents to apply their theological and ethical perspectives to their lived experiences in civil societies. That reality raises universal and important questions about the proper deployment of religious speech in pluralistic societies. What role should religious speech play in pluralistic societies? Putting the shoe on the other foot, how can legitimate and informed critiques of religion be encouraged and protected as well? The panelists seek to address these questions through multiple lenses.
Sarah Greenwood’s paper, “Covenantal Authority and Civil Disobedience: Arendt, Heschel, and Non-violent Refusal of the Law,” explores the influence of Hannah Arendt and Abraham Heschel on using religious language to support civil disobedience. Eric Stephen examines the complex questions raised by proselytism in the public square in “‘You’re Either a Missionary or a Mission Field’: A Critical Examination of Contrasting American and European Approaches to Regulating Proselytism and Related Religious Speech.” Jason Blum shifts the focus to ask equally important questions about when and how religion can be critiqued in public discourse in “The Last Taboo: Ideology, Identity, and the Public Critique of Religion.”
Both Hannah Arendt and Abraham Joshua Heschel are Jewish-American theorists of civil disobedience. One, a full-time academic, the other, a part-time activist. And yet, not only are they experiencing, observing, participating in, and theorizing civil disobedience as a nonviolent way to refuse the law and the state, they are both thinking civil disobedience in profoundly Jewish ways. I take this theoretical intervention a step further to read Heschel's writings about his experience in the civil rights and the anti-war movements with Arendt's essay to extrapolate covenantal authority as a political and communal practice that can illuminate current political conditions and open a path towards an agonistic politics that holds the multiplicity of individuals and ideas as a necessity.
In recent decades, legal precedents developed by the Supreme Court of the United States and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have diverged markedly in their willingness to countenance laws regulating proselytism and related forms of religious speech. Whereas the United States grants robust protections to proselytizers in order to guard against content- or viewpoint-based restrictions on speech meant to persuade, the ECHR often upholds such restrictions in an effort to balance the free speech and free exercise rights of speakers with the dignitary concerns of listeners and the state’s interest in maintaining civic peace. This paper seeks to elucidate and analyze the reasons underlying these contrasting doctrinal approaches. In doing so, particular emphasis will be placed on the role that discourses surrounding “human dignity” play in shaping how legal disputes over proselytism are framed, deliberated upon, and ultimately resolved within these two legal regimes.
Religion’s influence in America has recently been bolstered by both new laws and Supreme Court rulings favoring religious citizens and institutions. Simultaneously, religion is insulated by social norms that reject criticism of religion as antireligious prejudice. Responding to these trends, I argue that morally responsible criticism of religion is not only possible but a necessary dimension of public discourse that must be differentiated from antireligious prejudice. This is achieved by distinguishing between religion’s functions as ideology and identity. Religions shape identities in ways resembling race or ethnicity, and criticism of religion in this mode constitutes discrimination. However, religions also entail ideology – doctrines, values, and principles that effect broader society – and these are entirely appropriate for public critique. Morally defensible criticism of religion targets its ideological dimension, while antireligious discrimination targets religion as an identity.