Part III | Expanded Analysis

Category A | Frameworks

Topic 1 | Principled pluralism

Principled pluralism is a strategy for living together with our deep differences (religious and otherwise), without requiring anyone to give up their deep convictions. Principled pluralism will not require people to limit manifestations of their convictions any more than is necessary for living together peacefully and to protect the rights and freedoms of others. It provides a more sustainable strategy for addressing diversity of thought and protecting religious freedom than other governance frameworks such as multiculturalism, moralism, or other forms of pluralism, such as laïcité or Judeo-Christian secularism.¹

Introduction  

Diversity is an inescapable constant of humanity, by nature of our inherent ability to produce thought. Diversity of thought produces tensions in governance that intersect with politics, religion, human rights, and other spheres. Professionals and academics from various disciplines—including political science, economics, and theology—have attempted to address these tensions in a variety of ways. Experiments at the level of national governance tend to fall into one of three distinct sociopolitical policy frameworks: multiculturalism, pluralism, and moralism.
 
All frameworks of governance must answer the question of how to sustainably address diversity of thought. Freedom of religion requisite for human flourishing, if attended by a sensitivity to political and other human rights interests, is best served by pluralism. Principled pluralism provides the best path forward for all people of all faiths and no faith to live peacefully with one another while calling forth the best in each other.

Governance frameworks  

• Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism as a governance framework attempts to sustainably address diversity of thought by allowing all identity groups to live out their principles fully. Multiculturalism is characterized broadly by the pursuit of group-differentiated public policies that move beyond the protection of basic individual civil and political rights.² Its modus operandi is a step beyond the laissez faire mantra of “live and let live”; rather, multiculturalism redefines the relation between institutions and individuals by extending institutional action toward identity groups rather than individual persons. If its tenets are enacted to their logical ends, all identity groups would enjoy total social license—as well as the protection of the state—to act freely on their deeply held convictions.

This framework raises serious questions regarding limitations in the realm of religious identity—for example, if a minority religious group were to hold sincere religious convictions requiring that homosexual activity be punished by death. Because multiculturalism makes no claim to the moral superiority of one group’s sincere beliefs over another, the rights of such a religious group could not be reconciled with the equally valid rights of the LGTBQ community. Multiculturalism seeks to empower all minority group identities to overcome any systematic oppression facing those groups. But it does not address reconciling different minority group identities when their rights are in tension.

It would be an unfair strawman to say proponents of multiculturalism are incapable of condemning violent action against marginalized groups, but the framework’s limitations are obvious when taken to their extreme. Many proponents of multiculturalism would agree that the rights of some groups must be restrained to avoid violating the rights of others. However, the complete denial of any difference in the inherent morality of some interests over others robs the framework of the ability to articulate a systematic way for approaching tensions in rights claims.

Federalism³ mitigates some of this tension by allowing groups to establish variations of social rules and governance while maintaining a level of cohesion with a greater whole.⁴ However, federalism relies on some level of unity across the factions of locales attempting to exist as a greater whole. Multiculturalism, though apt at recognizing the felt and perceived ill treatment of some group identities, fails to provide tools that foster unity across group identities. It can provide separate spaces for different groups to act out their lives differently, but it cannot create a space that diverse groups share. Limitations on the rights of group identities are as necessary as the limitations on individual rights that all societies must enforce to sustain shared existence in a stable, unified state.

Analyzing the problem of diversity of thought at the level of group identity may be the wrong level of analysis. Multiculturalism, though the opposite of moralism in principle (see below), has a way of collapsing in on itself in a manner nearly indistinguishable from moralism. Indeed, “fixation on identity has itself been interpreted as the product of a certain kind of moralism. Focusing too narrowly on identity above all risks confusing the effects of subordination with its causes.”⁵ Enforcing a rigid claim that group identity is the proper level of analysis for social governance risks transgressing against multiculturalism’s own tenet of state-level-enforced tolerance. In sum, multiculturalism, like moralism, does not provide adequate tools for diverse peoples to share space in peace.

• Moralism  

Moralism as a governance framework addresses diversity of thought by attempting to homogenize social conscience, eradicating thought that diverges from state-mandated moral claims. It has been employed historically by extremists in both right-wing⁶ and left-wing politics,⁷ theocratic states,⁸ and atheist nations.⁹ From Nazi Germany¹⁰ to Stalinist Russia,¹¹ totalitarian states have often sought to direct not only the political affairs of a nation but the individual consciences of the citizenry.

Moralism is easy to condemn in its pure totalitarian form; after all, it is difficult to defend class warfare, politically orchestrated famines, and genocide. However, moralism sneaks into societies in less obviously abhorrent ways.

Moralism can be found in liberal commercial democracies when citizens make “judgements about people while failing to recognize their common humanity” or allow “moral thought and judgement to extend their influence beyond their proper limits in our lives.”¹² Such actions can foster discontent across individuals and groups who are not bound by a unified vision of morality. Even where democratic institutions and a strong commitment to the rule of law protect the rights of individuals, discontent can fester and erupt in illegal acts of violence and discrimination, or in formalized efforts to legalize and institutionalize similar ill treatment. Even if governance prohibits moralism from being implemented by an autocrat, unrest can foment if social life is not organized in a framework that requires mutual understanding. Only principled pluralism can offer such a framework.

• Pluralism  

In the aim of creating a sustainable diverse society, pluralism as a governance framework does not fail to force concessions but does not mandate homogeneity. It demands some rights and interests be foregone but only as few as possible to facilitate peace. Pluralism maintains that, while we are unlikely to agree on some of the deepest and most important questions (such as the nature of God or religious truth), we can still find ways of living together in peace and harmony. The key legal principle is tolerance. The key political principle is respect. And the key religious principle is love.

Religious Freedom and Pluralism  

Various theories exist on how to ensure freedom of religion or belief within a pluralistic framework. Some maintain that the role of the state is to provide “freedom from religion” and would seek to silence religious reasoning from the public sphere all together.¹³ This strain of thought is embodied in the French framework of laïcité.

Laïcité has several dimensions, including “the exclusion of religion from the spheres of power and authority in modern societies . . . , the privatization of religion, and a decline in church membership and potential disappearance of individual religious belief.”¹⁴ Proponents argue that “laicism confines religious belief and practice ‘to a space where they cannot threaten political stability or the liberties of “freethinking” citizens.’”¹⁵ Critics describe it as “a coercive process in which the legal powers of the state, the disciplinary powers of family and school, and the persuasive powers of government and media have been used to produce the secular citizen who agrees to keep religion in the private domain.”¹⁶

Laïcité prevents religious reasoning from contributing to public dialogue, in pursuit of peaceful consensus. Separation of church and state can be an integral part of a pluralistic framework that provides for diversity, peace, and religious freedom, “[b]ut when this separation is interpreted to mean the erasure of the religious from the public sphere, as in the case of laïcité, equality of respect and freedom of conscience can be compromised in the interest of an absolutized operative mode.”¹⁷

As acknowledged in multiculturalism, human flourishing requires the freedom for identity groups to express themselves authentically. Indeed, “[f]reedom of religion cannot mean freedom from religion, any more than the freedom to accept or reject Marxism cannot mean the freedom from Marxist arguments and practices.”¹⁸ Precluding religious expression silences diverse voices, preventing them from contributing to the consensus process in sociopolitical contexts. Suppressing religious reasoning in the public spheres runs the risk of marginalizing communities in a similar manner as moralism. Other frameworks within pluralism offer better alternatives.

Judeo-Christian secularism offers an alternative to laïcité but is not without its own limitations. It “connects contemporary Western secular formations to a legacy of ‘Western’ (Christian, later Judeo-Christian) values, cultural and religious belief, historical practices, legal traditions, governing institutions, and forms of identification.”¹⁹ Judeo-Christian secularism rests on the claim “that Western political order is grounded in a set of core values with their origins in (Judeo-)Christian tradition.”²⁰

While pluralism in the abstract requires all participants in a society to agree to some boundaries on rights, Judeo-Christian secularism articulates those boundaries from a distinctly Western perspective based on distinctly Western principles. Such principles have successfully steered nation-states toward inclusive, peaceful social states on every continent. However, the Western-centric nature of this framework runs the risk of silencing views outside that context, thus preventing them from contributing to the social consensus. This framework is also hard to implement in places where cultural belief engenders deep suspicion and even contempt for the West. At its best, it may not transplant well cross-culturally. At its worst, it may degenerate into a Western chauvinist moralism by articulating the criteria for limiting religious expression in uniquely Western terms. While Judeo-Christian secularism is inherently more inclusive than laïcité, religious freedom and human flourishing are better served by other frameworks of sociopolitical governance.

Principled pluralism offers an attractive alternative governance framework to laïcité and Judeo- Christian secularism. It seeks to find strategies for living together that do not demand we modify or abandon the manifestations of our most important commitments, ideals, and understandings of truth, unless such limitations are necessary to protect the reciprocal rights of others or deeply important public goods.

Principled pluralism evokes a commitment between actors in a pluralistic society to move beyond toleration and to genuinely try to understand and respect differences, even of an important moral character. Religious and secular actors are required “to enter a dialogue in which they pursue mutual understanding with those different views.”²¹ Actors are invited to present their “full rationales—untruncated, un-sanitized, unfiltered”—in the pursuit of creating social consensus regarding the code of conduct for the expression of religious and other belief.²² The commitment to deep, authentic, respectful dialogue can eventually produce a consensus²³ that appeases competing views of the true, the good, and the beautiful.

The key idea is that we can find ways to live together in peace and harmony without sacrificing our core beliefs and core manifestations of belief. Principled pluralism may fail to produce peaceful coexistence among diverse peoples if relativism (all truth is relative) or personalism (my truth is as good as your truth) corrupt the dialogue among the governed. In such a case, the framework may devolve into a nonsensical extreme multiculturalism that cannot provide a consensus on what behavior is unacceptable and what is not. To overcome this danger, it is necessary to emphasize the duty of each actor in society to find consensus following the “least restrictive means” philosophy.²⁴

Templeton Religion Trust (TRT) in recent years has promoted the concept of covenantal pluralism, which is akin to principled pluralism.²⁵ Although an appealing term and concept, covenantal pluralism may be a misapplication of the religious term covenant. For some religious traditions, including Latter-day Saints, a covenant is a sacred and solemn promise involving reciprocal obligations between God and human beings, who enter covenantal relationships through sacred, vertically binding ordinances. Those invoking the term covenantal pluralism are often receiving or seeking funding from TRT—a fact noted as an observation rather than a criticism, and as a guide for understanding the source and purpose of the term.

Conclusion  

Human flourishing requires the ability to authentically express and exercise deeply held beliefs—in other words, it requires religious freedom. Peace and stability in a diverse society, however, require some basic level of consensus regarding what constitutes impermissible manifestations of belief and how such manifestations should be regulated. Multiculturalism, as a framework, fails to acknowledge these questions and, thus, fails to generate consensus. Moralism answers the question of how to regulate behavior by stifling diversity and has historically served as an excuse for totalitarian states to commit atrocities. Other forms of pluralism similarly fall short: laïcité runs the risk of precluding religious views and expression from the public sphere, and Judeo-Christian secularism runs the risk of silencing non-Western views. Only principled pluralism provides an adequate framework for reaching consensus and creating flourishing societies where diverse people can live together in peace.

References

1. Toolkit Topic 1 (Principled pluralism) was originally drafted by Connor Hansen, 2023 ICLRS Summer Fellow.

2. Duncan Ivison, The Moralism of Multiculturalism, 22(2) JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHILOSOPHY 171, 172 (2005), doi:10.1111/j.1468-5930.2005.00301.x.

3. “Federalism[ is a] mode of political organization that unites separate states or other polities within an overarching political system in a way that allows each to maintain its own integrity.” Federalism, BRITANNICA, https://www.britannica.com/topic/federalism (last updated Dec. 20, 2024).

4. See id.

5. Ivison, supra, at 174.

6. See Margot Olavarria, New Evidence Links Pinochet to Human Rights Abuses, 33(6) NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 1 (2000), https://search-ebscohost-com.byu.idm.oclc.org/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip&db=asn&AN=3254517&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

7. See Eric Hyer, China’s Policy Towards Uighur Nationalism, 26(1) JOURNAL OF MUSLIM MINORITY AFFAIRS 75 (2006), doi:10.1080/13602000600738731.

8. See Tamar Mitts, Gregoire Phillips & Barbara F. Walter, Studying the Impact of ISIS Propaganda Campaigns, 84(2) JOURNAL OF POLITICS 1220 (2022), doi:10.1086/716281.

9. Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime’s Simultaneous War Against Vietnam and Genocide of Cambodia’s Ethnic Vietnamese Minority, 53(3) CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 342 (2021), doi:10.1080/14672715.2021.1902362.

10. See Andrew Donson, Why Did German Youth Become Fascists? Nationalist Males Born 1900 to 1908 in War and Revolution, 31(3) SOCIAL HISTORY 338 (2006), doi:10.1080/03071020600746677.

11. See Boris Gorelik, To Hell and Back: A South African Jew in Stalin’s Russia, 76(2) JEWISH AFFAIRS 48 (2021), https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352351137.

12. Alfred Archer, The Problem with Moralism, 31(3) RATIO 342, 343 (2018), doi:10.1111/rati.12168.

13. Robert Joustra, Three Rival Versions of Religious Freedom: What Canada’s Office of Religious Freedom Can Teach Us About Principled Pluralism, 12(3) THE REVIEW OF FAITH & INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 41, 43 (2014), doi:10.1080/15570274.2014.943944 (quoting Doug Saunders, Opinion, “Religious Freedom” Sends the Wrong Message to the Wrong People, THE GLOBE & MAIL (Oct. 6, 2012), https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/religious-freedom-sends-the-wrong-message-to-the-wrong-people/article4591927.

14. Id. at 42 (quoting ELIZABETH SHAKMAN HURD, THE POLITICS OF SECULARISM IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 29 (2008)).

15. Id. (quoting TALAL ASAD, FORMATIONS OF THE SECULAR: CHRISTIANITY, ISLAM, MODERNITY 191 (2003)).

16. Id. (quoting Partha Chatterjee, Fasting for Bin Laden: The Politics of Secularization in Contemporary India, in POWERS OF THE SECULAR MODERN: TALAL ASAD AND HIS INTERLOCUTORS 31, 31–57 (David Scott & Charles Hirschkind eds., 2006)).

17. Id. at 48.

18. Id.

19. Id. at 44 (quoting HURD, supra, at 38).

20. Id. at 45 (quoting HURD, supra, at 38).

21. Id. at 48 (quoting DANIEL PHILPOTT, JUST AND UNJUST PEACE: AN ETHIC OF POLITICAL RECONCILIATION 116 (2012)).

22. Id. (quoting PHILPOTT, supra).

23. Id.

24. The term least restrictive means comes from the “strict scrutiny” standard of judicial review for substantial government burdens (i.e., limits) on religious exercise. The U.S. Religious Freedom Restoration Act, for example, requires that substantial government burdens on religious exercise be the “least restrictive means of furthering [a] compelling government interest.” See Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1(b)(2) (2024). A “least restrictive means philosophy” similarly ensures that societal actors reach consensus on limits to religious exercise that constitute the least restrictive means of achieving a significant societal interest.

25. See Initiative: Covenantal Pluralism, Moving from Tolerance to Pluralism, TEMPLETON RELIGION TRUST 2023. https://templetonreligiontrust.org/covenantal-pluralism (last visited Dec. 2024).