The Lockean Case for Religious Tolerance: The Social Contract and the Irrationality of Persecution
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2009.00796.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Lockean Case for Religious Tolerance:
The Social Contract and the Irrationality of
Persecutionpost_796846..865
Ryan Pevnick
New York University
John Locke’s non-religious arguments for tolerance are often seen as inadequate.He is criticized for :(1)
failing to give reasons in support of a strict separation between the roles of church and state; and (2)
wrongly insisting that the coercion of belief is irrational. I argue that once we understand Locke’s
arguments for tolerance within the context of his social contract framework,his non-sectarian arguments
can circumvent such criticisms. Lockean arguments for tolerance are thus stronger than typically
supposed.
There are two main ways to defend the claim that government power ought not
to be used for the purpose of furthering any par ticular religious conception. First,
tolerance might be advocated from within a particular conception of the good;
that is, one might argue from premises particular to a certain theological or
religious position.While this strategy is important, it is limited in that it requires
advocates of tolerance to develop distinct supporting arguments for each con-
ception present in society. For instance,while John Locke argues that tolerance is
a Christian virtue, this particular argument will cease to be effective if control of
the state falls to atheists. Second,one might attempt to demonstrate that there are
reasons to reject gover nment attempts to pursue a particular religious conception
which do not grow from the commitments of a particular religious view. Here the
hope is to show that there are reasons to accept limits on the government’s right
to entangle itself in religious matters that may appeal to a set of people with a
range of core commitments. Although strictly speaking such arguments are not
neutral or non-sectarian, they seek to appeal to interests individuals have qua
citizens and thus hope to put support for religious tolerance on a somewhat
broader footing than the first type of argument can.1Because he is interested in
appealing to the widest possible audience, Locke emphatically pursues both of
these strategies.2However, it is the second general strategy that I will here
primarily be concer ned with.3
This is not because the first strategy is irrelevant or otherwise uninteresting,4but
because the power of Locke’s pursuit of the latter strategy has not been
adequately appreciated. Indeed, the literature is r ife with doubts about the
cogency of Locke’s non-religious arguments.5There are two main reasons for
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2009.00796.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2009 VOL 57, 846–865
© 2009The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2009 Political StudiesAssociation
these doubts. First, critics argue that Locke asserts, rather than justifies, the stark
separation between the domain of the gover nment and the domain of the church
on which his advocacy of tolerance hinges. Second, following Jonas Proast, many
commentators insist that Locke is wrong to argue that attempting to coerce belief
is irrational. Together these concerns are often taken to lay waste to Locke’s
non-religious arguments for tolerance.
For instance, Jeremy Waldron influentially claims that Locke fails to provide
arguments ‘which might dissuade someone here and now from actions of intol-
erance and persecution’ ( Waldron, 1991, p. 98). Likewise, Micah Schwartzman
suggests that none of ‘Locke’s main arguments for toleration have general or
universal appeal. His case for toleration cannot be understood or made coherent
except in relation to its religious content’ (Schwartzman, 2005, p. 682). This
position has become ‘the most influential contemporary reading’ ( Bou-Habib,
2003, p. 611) of Locke’s Letter and, as a result, analysts have concluded that ‘there
is no way to reconstruct’Locke’s argument ‘to meet the objections’(Quinn, 2001,
p. 60). Thus, despite the Letter’s canonical standing, critics have widely dismissed
its non-religious argumentative power as a result of objections regarding the
putative (1) lack of rationale for separating church and state and (2) irrationality
of coercing belief.
In this article, I situate Locke’s non-religious arguments for tolerance within his
social contract framework in order to show that his position is not susceptible to
these now standard criticisms.6Rather than providing a historical account of the
development of Locke’s views or his motivation for holding them, I focus on
demonstrating that situating Locke’s arguments within his social contract frame-
work allows one to see that they are not vulnerable to the most prevalent
criticisms. Thus, the main thrust of the article is unabashedly ahistorical;7rather
than trying to understand Locke’s writings in their historical context, I argue that
critics have wrongly insisted that Locke’s non-religious arguments fail and so
cannot be of any aid in current attempts to understand the appropriate limits on
the use of government power to further par ticular religious conceptions. Our
primary focus, then, is on the argumentative power of Locke’s non-religious case
for tolerance.
The argument proceeds as follows.In the first section, I demonstrate that Locke’s
contractual arguments constitute an important (though not always sufficient)
rationale for prohibiting the magistrate from pursuing religious ends. In the
second section, by situating the argument regarding the rationality of coercing
belief within this social contract framework, I demonstrate that although analysts
have successfully rebutted one of the reasons that Locke offers for the claim that
coercing belief is irrational, they have ignored a second and stronger reason for
Locke’s insistence on the irrationality of coercing belief. If successful, these
sections demonstrate that Locke’s non-religious arguments can escape the criti-
cisms so often thought to ravage them.
LOCKEAN TOLERANCE 847
© 2009The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2009 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2009, 57(4)
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