Equality, Freedom, and Religion

195 Pages·2012·0.786 MB·English

by  Roger Trigg

EQUALITY, FREEDOM, AND RELIGION
This page intentionally left blank
EQUALITY,
FREEDOM, AND
RELIGION
ROGERTRIGG
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
© Roger Trigg 2012
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Data available
Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by
MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn
ISBN 978–0–19–957685–2
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
For Anna, Nicholas, and Lydia
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1 Does Religious Freedom Matter? 11
2 Does Equality Trump Freedom? 27
3 Religious Beliefs and Institutions 41
4 Equal Beliefs? 55
5 Is Religious Toleration Enough? 69
6 Freedom from the Law? 85
7 Belief and Practice 97
8 Necessary Limits to Religious Freedom 111
9 The Challenge of Equality 127
10 The Foundations of Equality and Freedom 139
Conclusion 153
Notes 159
Bibliography 173
Index 179
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
This book follows my R eligion in Public Life: Must Faith be Privatized?
(Oxford University Press, 2007). In that, I wrote about how far the
total neutrality of the state to religion is possible, or desirable. I have
more recently written about religious freedom in the United King-
dom in a report for the Theos Think Tank in London called F ree to
Believe? Religious Freedom in a Liberal Society (2010). The present book
deals, on a much broader canvas, with how the competing demands of
freedom and equality affect religious belief in both Europe and North
America.
My thanks must go to many, but I must pick out Dr Justin Barrett
and my other colleagues in the interdisciplinary Oxford project on the
cognitive science of religion, which was for three years funded by the
John Templeton Foundation. I must also mention those with whom
I have set up the Centre for the Study of Religion in Public Life in
Kellogg College, Oxford. As well as working on the implications of
religious diversity in Europe, we are collaborating on the subject of
international religious freedom with the Berkley Center for Religion,
Peace and World Affairs in Georgetown University, Washington DC.
The ideas discussed in this book have a relevance and resonance be-
yond Britain, and indeed Europe.
Above all, I am grateful to my wife, Julia, my daughter, Dr Alison
Teply, and my son-in-law, Robert Teply, all of whom have helped me.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to the John Templeton Foundation,
which gave me a personal research grant to assist in the writing of this
book, and to the Master and Fellows of St Cross College, Oxford,
which generously received me as a Visiting Fellow.
Roger Trigg