In this post, I want to briefly state what I take to be the most defensible libertarian approach to religious contributions to public life. I’ve been writing on why libertarians have had so little to say on the matter, and I think it is largely due to libertarian hostility to democracy, since religion and politics issues tend to concern the proper role of religion in democratic politics, where the latter is understood as legitimate. But given that democracies are going to be around for a long time, I thought it worthwhile to at least state what I think the proper libertarian view should be.

We can divide the vast number of issues raised by the “religion in politics” literature into four categories: (i) the special status of religion in the law, (ii) religious discourse, (iii) religious exemptions, and (iv) religious establishment. The special status of religion notes that religious reasoning and institutions are given constitutional protections that parallel secular reasoning and institutions are not. Theorists then ask whether the unequal treatment can be justified. Religious discourse focuses on the appropriateness of using religious arguments when advancing political positions, at least where important matters are at stake. Religious exemptions focus on exceptions to laws based on religious objections, and religious establishment focus on various state activities that are seen as advancing religion or singling it out for some sort of repression.

We can divide up religious establishment into three parts – (a) coercive establishment, (b) revenue establishment, and (c) symbolic establishment. Coercive establishment occurs when the state uses legal coercion to advance a particular religion, religion in general, or secularism in general. Revenue establishment occurs when the state uses its financial resources to advance a particular religion, religion in general, or secularism in general. Symbolic establishment occurs when the state employs religious or secular symbols that only represent one or more religious or secular sects; by stipulation, the last form of establishment is wholly non-coercive, like posting the Ten Commandments in a courtroom.

So in light of this, here is my position:

(1) The Special Status of Religion: religious conscience and religious institutions should have no special protections in the law. Secular conscience and secular institutions are on a moral par with their religious counterparts. But this equal treatment should be understood as leveling up the protection given to secular conscience and secular institutions, not leveling down the protection given to religious conscience and religious institutions.

(2) Religious Discourse: in general, there are no ethical (and certain no legal) restraints on when a citizen can appeal to religious reasoning in her public discourse on political matters. Officials also have an absolute moral and religious right to freedom of speech, save when their speech constitutes a speech act that affects whether someone is coerced (like a judicial decision).

(3) Religious Exemptions: in general, since religious exemptions are reductions in coercion, libertarians should favor religious exemptions basically all of the time. Libertarians won’t like the special status given to religious exemptions, but it is better to have less coercion rather than more, so the inequality is no reason to support the continued coercion of the religious. Libertarians should treat secular requests for exemptions similarly.

(4a) Coercive Religious Establishment: libertarians should always oppose it.

(4b) Revenue Establishment: libertarians should oppose government attempts to fund expressly religious activities like proselytizing rather than a religious group’s charitable activity. Insofar as we have social insurance, libertarians should not oppose government funds going to religious organizations in addition to secular organizations unless they think that such funding will undermine the status and independence of the religious institutions in question, as those religious institutions understand their status and independence. Libertarians should not oppose school vouchers on the grounds that they’re forms of establishment. That would be an unacceptable reason to oppose an increase in the freedom of parents to choose schools for their children. It’s the sort of reason the statist left appeals to in order to trap children in government schools on the grounds that this will improve school quality.

(4c) Symbolic Establishment: here we face hard issues. Libertarians oppose the initiation of coercion but the use of religious or secularist symbols involves no coercion save the coercion required to prevent people from either removing those symbols or adding symbols of their own. So I think traditional libertarian political theory lacks the resources to address symbolic establishment. The only way I know how to address the issue is to argue that taxpayers own public buildings and objects (like courthouses and currency) and that the government should only use public buildings and objects in ways that represent everyone and does not reject the values of anyone. That sort of unanimity rule seems too demanding, though, given that some people can act as disgruntled holdouts. But if we go with a supermajority or simple majority rule, then dominant social groups, religious or secular, can legitimately press public buildings and objects to represent their views. So my conclusion is that libertarians qua libertarian need have no position on this issue, and should generally not be too bothered about attempts at symbolic establishment or ending symbolic establishment so long as symbolic establishment isn’t an indicator of coercive or revenue establishment. Judge Roy Moore, for instance, wants to post the Ten Commandments in Alabama courtrooms as a means of moving towards coercive establishment, so he should be opposed. But if a World War I memorial has a cross on it, it seems silly, even offensive, to forcibly remove it. I also can’t see why having “In God We Trust” on fiat currency most libertarians oppose is worth getting upset about. In fact, I think that unless symbolic establishment is meant to directly threaten or marginalize religious or secular minorities, then libertarians just shouldn’t care about it. Of course, as secular persons or religious persons, we might care. And I oppose symbolic establishment when I’m wearing my public reason hat. But I can’t find a good reason to worry about it in the cases I offer when I wear my libertarian hat.

So that’s what I think libertarians should say about religion in politics-type issues in general. I think there’s a question mark on symbolic establishment. I know libertarian atheists and religious minorities who believe that symbolic establishment is a communicative harm—a way the state indicates that it favors some citizens over others. But I don’t think there’s any specifically libertarian objection to those forms of establishment unless they indicate a disposition towards coercive establishment or overly direct revenue establishment.

It may turn out that, in practice, most cases of symbolic establishment are indicators of that disposition to coerce, and so libertarians should oppose them, but I don’t think libertarian political theories have the resources to identify symbolic establishment itself as a communicative harm or an injustice above and beyond all the many injustices carried out by the state. If Italy puts crucifixes in its public schools, or if the US leaves “In God We Trust” on coins, do libertarians really have any more reason to be upset qua libertarians than they have to be upset about government schools and government money? I can’t see any reason we should unless we adopt some sort of principle of communicative harm that is more commonly found in egalitarian political theories. After all, libertarians don’t give a damn about the ethics of the American flag, since it is a dumb symbol of an evil thing. Should we care more about fiat currency? Of course, if people started posting “Death to the Jews!” all over public buildings and currency, that would be morally objectionable, and would probably constitute some sort of injustice, but how is a libertarian to characterize that injustice? I’m not saying it can’t be done, but I don’t think it’s easy.

Finally, a thought for the commenters. A few of you are ferocious, withering atheists, and when I post on religion, you vent your rage at me. That’s fine. But in this thread, I’m asking you to separate your atheist hostility to symbolic establishment from your libertarian hostility to symbolic establishment. So consider why a libertarian qua libertarian should object to symbolic establishment. I think the best way to go is to wade into the complicated ethics of government-owned buildings, objects, and spaces. Libertarians disagree dramatically about how to manage them, such as the use of public land (remember that getting the issue of the rules governing public property right bears directly on the libertarian attitude to immigration).