The role of religious arguments in Australian politics is very much a live issue. Recent public debates on topics such as embryonic stem-cell research, abortion and same-sex marriage have been heavily influenced by religious perspectives. In a recent article in Policy, Darryn Jensen argues that religious viewpoints can make a valuable contribution to political debates on contentious policy questions.[1] The present article offers a contrary view. I argue that participants in political debates in religiously pluralistic communities, such as Australia, should generally couch their arguments in secular terms.

I begin by discussing the underlying purpose of political discourse. The point of politics is to pursue a general social consensus on the legitimacy of government actions. Explicitly religious perspectives are ill-equipped to contribute to this process. I do not mean to imply that religious believers should be excluded from having a say in debates about political issues. But they should present their arguments in secular language, appealing not to revealed religion, but rather to the basic values of others in the community.

The Point of Politics

What, after all, is the point of politics? Jensen’s article contains little explicit discussion of this issue. He does, however, provide some clues as to the conception of politics he has in mind. Towards the end of his article, for instance, he characterises political debates as requiring ‘full and frank discussion between the proponents of different value systems with a view to discovering principles which most citizens can affirm from their own perspectives and which provide a measure of coherence to the state’s exercises of power.’[2] In another passage, he suggests religious viewpoints can ‘illuminate the political values which are the subject of general acceptance within the political community’.[3]

Two ideas emerge from these comments. The first is that politics exists to forge consensus on government actions by drawing on underlying social values. The second is that such consensus-building is necessary to bring coherence—and therefore legitimacy—to government decisions. In my view, each of these points is central to understanding the purpose of political discourse. They are therefore worth exploring in further detail.

Politics arises from the need for social coordination. Most citizens recognise the desirability of a stable system of law. On the other hand, people often disagree on what form that legal system should take. In other words, people recognise the necessity of legal rules, but wish to exercise continuing control over the content of those rules, to protect their own principles and interests. Tom Campbell calls this tension the ‘tragic paradox of politics’.[4] It follows that the political process has an important role to play in forging a workable consensus between groups in society with differing political views.

Since people are unwilling to relinquish control over legal rules completely, in case their interests are forgotten, the consensus-building role of politics is central to the legitimacy of government actions. People wish their viewpoints to be taken seriously in political discussion. Laws that appear to be simply arbitrary exercises of power are unlikely to satisfy this demand.

It follows that the outcomes of political processes must at least be couched in terms that appear susceptible of rational justification. Campbell calls this the requirement of ‘moral form’.[5] It entails that government decisions must be made transparently, on rational grounds and in accordance with overarching rules or standards. In order to accept government actions as legitimate, people must be able to see that there is a reason for them. The aim of political discourse is to render these reasons transparent to all sectors of the community.

Since politicians sometimes use multiple approaches in selling a policy to distinctive constituencies, different groups may have different understandings of the reasons behind a government decision. This does not necessarily prevent the decision from being generally accepted. However, if there is only one apparent reason for a policy, it must be a reason that is comprehensible to all segments of society; otherwise, those who are excluded will find it hard to view the resulting decision as a legitimate exercise of government power.

The Problem of Dissemination

So the point of politics is to forge consensus on government actions, by promoting awareness of the reasons behind them. I would suggest that accommodating explicitly religious arguments within this process presents a serious problem. Let us call it ‘the problem of dissemination’.

It order to build consensus on political decisions, it is not just necessary that those decisions reflect underlying reasons. It is also necessary that the reasons are communicated in some way to the citizens. In other words, it must be possible to disseminate the rationales throughout the community. This does not necessarily mean that government agents must explicitly state the reasons for their actions—although they will often do so, especially where key public policy issues are concerned. Rather, what is required is that the possible justifications are made transparent, either through explicit statements from the decision-makers or by the form of the action itself. In some cases, there may be multiple possible justifications for the policy; in other cases, there may be one dominant rationale.

Furthermore, it is not enough simply that the reasons for a policy are communicated; the justification itself must take a form that allows citizens to recognise its persuasive force. Of course, not every citizen will actually be persuaded by the reasons behind a government decision. But they should at least be able to recognise the reasons as ones they could potentially affirm from their own points of view. If citizens are unable to recognise the rationales behind a policy as having at least some persuasive weight in terms of their own perspectives, those rationales will be entirely ineffective in forging consensus on government actions.

Rationales couched in religious terms face serious challenges in fulfilling this condition. The problem with explicitly religious arguments is that they are ill-equipped to persuade anyone who does not already identify with the religious tradition by which the argument is motivated. This is largely due to the role of faith in providing a foundation for religious belief.

An argument that appeals directly to a specific religious outlook is unlikely to convince someone who does not already share the faith of the author. Moreover, faith is not something that is easily rendered transparent to a non-believer: a non-religious person cannot readily view an appeal to faith as something she or he could potentially affirm from her or his own point of view.

One consequence of the faith-based nature of religious arguments is that they often rely explicitly or implicitly on appeals to authority. For example, arguments from religious perspectives frequently rely to some extent on the persuasive force of canonical religious texts. But many people in the Australian community do not regard such texts as having any inherent claim to moral authority. Furthermore, it is hard to find a basis for justifying the authority of the relevant teachings that does not presume a pre-existing level of religious conviction. It follows that religious rationales for government action will be persuasive only to those citizens who already share the religious outlook of the author.

The above considerations entail that, where there is a single dominant rationale for a government policy, justification should not appeal to religious motivations. Otherwise, it would be impossible for those segments of the community that do not share the religious convictions of the legislators to recognise the rationale as one they could potentially affirm. The danger here is that government positions on issues that provoke strong religious views, such as abortion and gay marriage, will come to be dominated by religious arguments.

Similar considerations apply in cases where there is more than one possible rationale for a government decision. In such cases, it may be that some segments of the community will view a policy as legitimate for secular reasons, while others will accept it for religious reasons. Clearly, however, these two types of reasons differ greatly in their potential reach. Secular justifications, if rationally and consistently formulated, can potentially be accepted by religious and non-religious citizens alike. Religious arguments, on the other hand, are only effective in forging consensus among those who already hold religious convictions. It follows that it is generally more conducive to the underlying purpose of politics that political actors favour secular, rather than religious, arguments.

The above point does not preclude political actors from appealing to religion when speaking specifically to citizens of a particular religious background on a policy that is susceptible of multiple justifications. But such a strategy is of limited utility in forging a general social consensus. In addressing themselves specifically to a religious audience, politicians are not attempting to engage with the community at-large. They are, quite literally, preaching to the converted.

A Question of Values

So religious perspectives are ill-equipped to promote general consensus on the legitimacy of government actions. However, Jensen does not just claim it is possible to accommodate such perspectives in political debates; he suggests they play a central role. He rests his argument for this conclusion on the important role of values in grounding political discourse. For Jensen, the most effective way to disseminate policy rationales will often be to draw on religious perspectives, since for many in the community this will be the most familiar way to discuss claims about value.[6]

In order to illustrate the role played by values in political discussion, Jensen draws a distinction between ‘values questions’ and ‘contingent questions’.[7] Values questions are ‘questions of basic morality, to which the Church can give authoritative answers’. Contingent questions are empirical matters, in relation to which the Church claims no special authority. Responding to a specific policy issue will generally involve asking questions of both types. For Jensen, religious perspectives play an important role in debating questions of value, but the Church should not overstep its authority by adopting positions on contingent issues.

The distinction between values questions and contingent questions is far from new. In fact, it simply restates a dichotomy that will be familiar to any student of moral philosophy: the distinction between is-statements and ought-statements, said to have been introduced by David Hume. Hume famously observed in his Treatise on Human Nature that moral arguments often commence by talking about what is the case, then shift imperceptibly to conclusions about what ought to be the case.[8] However, the fact that something is the case cannot by itself tell us anything about the way things ought to be. The upshot of Hume’s discussion is that any valid moral argument must appeal not only to propositions of fact, but also to basic presuppositions about value. Both types of proposition play an essential role in any argument for a prescriptive conclusion. This, I take it, is also Jensen’s point.

It is hard to dispute that any sound argument about what we ought to do – which would include political arguments about competing policies – involves considering both questions of fact and questions of value. Jensen argues that religious perspectives offer an important avenue for resolving the latter type of issue. This is because religious viewpoints represent ‘relatively familiar values systems’, which are widely accepted and understood by members of the community.[9] To exclude such perspectives from political discourse would leave us only with ‘secular philosophies which are unfamiliar to all but the experts’.[10]

It is no doubt true that some citizens would feel most comfortable discussing questions of value in religious terms. However, as we have seen, explicitly religious modes of argument hold limited prospects for extending policy discussions to a non-religious audience. The question therefore becomes whether there are alternative modes of disseminating propositions about value that religious believers can share with other members of the community.

Most contemporary practitioners of normative and applied ethics would consider it an important test of an ethical theory that it generally coheres with our ordinary intuitions about moral value. Of course, some of our intuitions may well turn out, upon careful reflection, to be misguided. But a theory that bears no resemblance to our ordinary moral views would seem to be of little use in guiding practical reasoning. From this perspective, it would be wrong to regard secular moral philosophies as disconnected from everyday morality.

One widely-accepted secular approach to moral argument that holds considerable promise in advancing public discussions is the ‘reflective equilibrium’ method outlined by John Rawls.[11] According to this perspective, moral theory should be viewed as an attempt to describe our sense of morality in terms of a coherent set of underlying principles. We should begin by identifying our ordinary moral convictions, then reflect upon the different sets of principles that may underpin them, settling upon the version we are best able to accept. While some aspects of Rawls’ approach are open to criticism,[12] it has the advantage, in political contexts, of both taking into account our individual moral viewpoints and leaving open the possibility of revising those viewpoints if sufficient reasons are provided.

It may be correct that, as Jensen puts it, ‘purely secular ethical systems are, as a class of philosophies, likely to be no less contentious than religious ethical systems’.[13] However, the key test of a useful political justification is not that everyone actually accepts it—it is difficult to think of any political viewpoint that does not have at least some dissenters—but, rather, that those who are not persuaded can at least recognise the justification as one they could potentially affirm from their own points of view. In other words, the possible reasons behind a policy must be rendered transparent to all participants in the debate. The outcome then has a good chance of being viewed as legitimate, despite continuing disagreement.

It follows that the key difference between religious and secular approaches to political argument lies not in the level of contention they inspire, but in the prospects they offer for resolving disagreements about value in a constructive way. Arguments resting on competing religious perspectives are apt to result in a rhetorical impasse, with the protagonists falling back upon revealed authorities that hold no persuasive value for those with different points of view. Secular arguments, by contrast, although they may provoke equally deep dissent, are at least framed in a manner that holds open the possibility of a reasoned outcome.

Conclusion

Jensen worries about the effects of discouraging religious viewpoints in political discussions. ‘The worst imaginable consequence,’ he says, ‘of the exclusion of revealed religion from public debate is that it creates a sense of grievance among religious believers.’[14] He suggests that such a sense of grievance may lead people of faith to abandon the quest for political consensus in favour of an all-out struggle for political domination.

I do not think he should be so worried. The conception of politics that I have suggested does not exclude religious believers from having a say in public debates.[15] All it requires is that they should not couch their arguments in terms of revealed religion, but rather make their appeal to the basic values of others in the community. It is really to the believers’ advantage to adopt such a secular mode of argument, since it makes it much easier for them to disseminate their positions to those who do not share their religious outlook.

The use of reason, rather than revelation, to develop claims about law and government has a long tradition among religious authors. Thomas Aquinas drew a famous distinction in the Summa Theologica between ‘divine law’ and ‘natural law’; divine law was the part of God’s design discoverable by humans through revelation, while natural law covered those aspects of God’s will discoverable by reason.[16] It is clear from the ensuing discussion that Aquinas considers the main foundation of the civil law to be not the former, but the latter.

If such an influential Catholic author as Aquinas was willing to stake his claim for legal justice in terms of human reason, rather than revealed religion, then contemporary believers should surely not feel excluded by being asked to state their political positions in secular terms. Nor, equally importantly, will they be alienating others by framing their views in such a way – as they would be if they expressed their arguments using an explicitly religious vocabulary. By adopting a secular mode of argumentation, they will no longer be simply preaching to the converted, but rather engaging in a broader discourse with the whole of the community. And that is what politics aims to achieve.[17]