Freedom and religion

Every year the CIS holds The Acton Lecture on Religion and Freedom, named after the Lord Acton, the great liberal and contrarian Roman Catholic who fought against the doctrine of papal infallibility in the mid-nineteenth century. This is where the great dictum ‘power tends to corrupt and absolutely power corrupts absolutely’ has its genesis. He was referring to both Popes and Kings.

The Acton Lecture was designed to highlight the link between freedom and religion and how one interacts with the other in a free society. This event is an important contribution to public debate because so often, religion is represented as either the only way to freedom or as a serious roadblock to its achievement. This dichotomy is, of course, unhelpful to any sort of meaningful discussion.

This year’s speaker was Professor Peter Berkowitz, a political philosopher from the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In his talk Constitutional Conservatism, he sought to examine the grounds for political agreement between free-market liberals and social conservatives. Although both these terms are rather fluid, they represent two political groupings (in America particularly) that, prima facie, do not necessarily have a lot in common.

Berkowitz argued that a revived constitutional conservatism that recognises proper limits to the role and spheres of government and religion is the best way of reconciling both. This sort of coalition of conservatives, albeit of different stripes, is workable and indeed necessary, as religion often provides the moral preconditions and helps the development of virtues without which free-market economies, which necessarily run on honesty and trust, cannot operate.

His talk poses challenges to liberals and raises questions. Does the state have a role in encouraging virtue? How can liberals create the moral and ethical preconditions for a society of individual conscience they wish to encourage but often feel bound not to defend?

Meaningful and nuanced contributions to the question about what role religion can and should play in a free society are sadly lacking in today’s political and cultural debates. Berkowitz’s contribution was refreshingly well-thought through. In an era when leviathan is once again on the rise, it reminded all in attendance of that most famous dictum of Lord Acton’s.

Luke Malpass is a Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies. The video of the 2010 Annual Acton Lecture will be available on the CIS website shortly.