Andrew R. Murphy

The Uneasy Relationship between Social Contract Theory and Religious Toleration

This essay examines two ideas central to the liberal tradition and commonly associated in American political thought: social contract theory and religious toleration. Through the examination of four important cases-the religious establishments in early Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and the thought of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke-I suggest that historically and conceptually these two ideas have little to do with each other and may be fundamentally at odds. By comparing debates over toleration in these four contexts, I seek to illuminate the tension and promise of building legitimate political authority while addressing religious diversity In doing so, I highlight this uneasy historical relationship between contractarianism and toleration.

Trial Transcript as Political Theory: Principles and Performance in the Penn-Mead Case

Political theorists can at times forget that the origins of political theory lie in the struggles of concrete political life. This paper focuses on one arena of political contestation: the collision between dissenters and their communities’ legal systems. It focuses on The Peoples Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted (1670), a purported transcript of the trial of William Penn and William Mead for disturbance of the peace. The trial plays an important role in the emergent principle of jury independence and a key role in Penn’s career as a political actor during the 1670s, culminating in his American colonizing enterprise. After a few remarks about the trial itself, the paper proceeds in two parts, each emphasizing an aspect of the text’s performative nature. First, akin to canonical works of the Anglo-American tradition, Peoples presents embedded principles: coherent and substantive visions of legitimate government, justified by reference to authoritative texts, arguments, and practices. But the defendants in Peoples also enact and embody political dissent in ways other than overt and explicit argumentation: Penn and Mead themselves appear as characters performing a politics of dissent. As a work of both political theory and political theater, Peoples offers insights into Deleuze’s notion of “dramatization,” and can lead us to a broader appreciation of the many different genres that constitute political theory.

CIVIL RELIGION FOR A DIVERSE POLITY

Philip S. Gorskis “Barack Obama and Civil Religion” offers a number of important contributions to the study of American culture generally, and American Civil Religion (ACR) more specifically. Gorskis appreciation of the deep diversity in contemporary American society is a welcome development in ACR analysis. I ask whether the term “civil religion” remains most adequate for describing the sort of cultural phenomenon that Gorski, following Bellah, attempts to capture, and offer some methodological and interpretive comments on the promise and challenge of studying ACR in the twenty-first century United States. I close with some more particular remarks on Barack Obama and the contours of ACR as sketched by Gorski.

Rawls and a Shrinking Liberty of Conscience

John Rawls claims that his system of political liberalism represents the “completion and extension” of liberty of conscience, a grand solution to the problem of religious diversity that accompanied liberalisms emergence in the early modern world. I argue that such a claim cannot withstand historical scrutiny, that Rawlsian liberalism instead represents a retreat from the commitments that drove liberal tolerationists. Rawlss political liberalism forces individuals with non-mainstream comprehensive doctrines either to change the doctrine to fit Rawlss conditions of publicity; to manufacture a “public” justification for comprehensively derived political stances; to seek to change the parameters of public debate through, for example, civil disobedience; or to advance comprehensively derived views only so long as public reasons follow in due course. The first two of these solutions run counter to the historical development of liberty of conscience, and the third fails due to Rawlss pervasive emphasis on stability. The fourth misrepresents the nature of moral reasoning and comprehensive doctrines themselves. In conclusion, I argue that underlying Rawlss liberalism is a belief-action split that has historically suppressed religious liberty and, more troubling, a type of repression that undermines the very notion of comprehensive doctrines.

RELIGION, CIVIL RELIGION, AND CIVIL WAR: FAITH AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS IN THE LINCOLN PRESIDENCY

Abraham Lincolns reverence for the Union and its preservation took on religious significance. Though Lincolns personal religious convictions are difficult to discern, his presidency was marked by a sacralizing public rhetoric on national identity and the struggle against slavery. The mystical reverence Lincoln displayed for the Union, and the principles of equality on which it was founded, comprised a meaningful civil religion that finds its greatest resonance in the Civil War. The war had implications for foreign affairs, as Lincoln sought to prevent England and others from recognizing the Confederacys legitimacy. Ultimately, Lincoln viewed preserving the Union as essential for the history of human freedom.

From practice to theory to practice: William Penn from prison to the founding of Pennsylvania

ABSTRACT Recent scholarship on religious toleration has been marked by a keen interest in the relationship between theory and practice. This essay takes up the genesis of William Penn’s theorizing about toleration in his experience of imprisonment, focusing on four particular episodes during his early years as a Quaker (between 1667 and 1671). These years were formative for Penn as a young man as well as for the increasingly sophisticated movement for toleration in Restoration England. The broader political theory that Penn articulated in England and attempted to realize in Pennsylvania contained economic, political, social, legal, and religious components, worked out in drafts of founding documents over the course of many months. But the foundation of that theory – its unshakeable commitment to liberty of conscience, its faith in juries as a potential restraint on the arbitrary exercise of power by civil governors, its unsteady mix of principled and pragmatic underpinnings – was laid in Penn’s early years as a Quaker, intertwined with his experiences of imprisonment in England and Ireland. In a very real sense, then, the road to Pennsylvania, for Penn, began in the Cork prison 15 years before he set foot in America.

The “Ground Zero mosque”: sacred space and the boundaries of American identity

For much of 2010, plans to develop a multipurpose Islamic center near the site of the 9/11 attacks in Lower Manhattan occasioned an intense nationwide debate. In this study of the “Ground Zero mosque” controversy, we focus on questions of identity and the sacred in the contemporary USA. We argue that the response to the “Ground Zero mosque” illuminates three important phenomena. First, it reveals the dynamics of cultural guardianship among those who opposed Park51, an effort to “preserve” a national identity tightly linked with Christianity (and antithetical to Islam). Second, as illustrated by the rights-based response by defenders of the project, we suggest that the language of liberalism may be insufficient to address a more expansive and complex understanding of the relationship between religion and political identity. And third, the controversy highlights the challenges that remain in the post-9/11 USA for American Muslims, many of whom understood the proposed center as their own, rather conventional, attempt to join the American mainstream.

Law and Civil Interest: William Penn’s Tolerationism

In many ways William Penn is a familiar figure to those interested in the history of religious tolerance and liberty of conscience. The story of a son of privilege who converted to a sect more often associated with the poor and unlearned, then followed his principles of religious liberty to the shores of America and founded a colony dedicated to those ideals, has fired the imagination of generations of scholars and citizens. Penn’s life and career have been explored by scholars from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. And yet, just a handful of years short of the 300th anniversary of Penn’s death, we still lack an overarching treatment of his political thought.

Prodigal Nation: September 11 and the American Jeremiad

September 11 transformed many aspects of the American political and religious landscape. Yet in one aspect of American political rhetoric, the attacks and their aftermath illustrated the power and persistence of a deeply rooted way of understanding traumatic events throughout the nation’ s history. Appearing on Pat Robertson’ s television program The 700 Club just days after the September 11 attacks, Jerry Falwell argued that what we saw on [September 11], as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact—if, in fact—God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve….The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked… [along with] the pagans…and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way…

Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham

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