Noted philosopher Martha Nussbaum criticized systematic discrimination against religious minorities Monday in a half-filled Salomon 001 during the 41st Annual Meiklejohn Lecture, titled "Liberty of Conscience: The Attack on Equal Respect."
Nussbaum is a professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago, where she holds appointments in the law school, divinity school and philosophy department.
"When people are afraid or insecure - when some unusual economic or political threat confronts a nation - respect for equality is even harder to sustain, and the comfort of an orthodoxy becomes ever more alluring," Nussbaum said.
The 1953 amendment to the Pledge of Allegiance to include the phrase "under God" exemplifies this trend, Nussbaum said. "The aim was to distinguish God-fearing Americans from godless communists. But its effect, of course, was to denigrate atheists, agnostics, polytheists, members of non-theistic religions such as Buddhism and Taoism and all of those more standard theists who just don't like to think of God as playing favorites among the nations," she said.
Nussbaum compared current anti-Muslim hysteria to unsavory historical patterns of discrimination against Catholics. "Catholics could be well-treated in the U.S. of the 19th and early 20th centuries only if they pretended to be like everyone else, reciting Protestant prayers in the schools and foregoing any public ceremonies that drew attention to their religious particularity," Nussbaum said.
The solution to these problems "requires giving citizens ample space to pursue their conscientious commitments, even when this involves giving them exemptions from some laws that apply equally to all citizens," she said. "Only ... a compelling state interest should ever be able to justify any diminution of that space," Nussbaum added.
"Today we hear the same demand that Muslims should assimilate, which means stopping any practice which draws attention to their difference from others," she added.
Nussbaum said opponents of equal respect for all religions typically fall into establishmentarian or anti-religious groupings. Establishmentarians believe that good order and public safety require a public commitment to a dominant religious orthodoxy. They assert and establish the primacy of their religion at the expense of other groups.
Nussbaum said establishmentarians have stopped persecuting other groups in favor of "a more cozy, apparently benign" claim that Christianity or monotheism undergirds American society.
The second, opposing group conceives of religion as difficult, primitive and counterproductive, Nussbaum said. Nussbaum criticized anti-religious activists for several reasons - anti-religious sentiment favors dominant religious groups while harming minority sects, she said, noting that French schools prohibit students from wearing yarmulkes, hijabs and "large crosses." But since Christian dogma does not mandate wearing a cross, these anti-religious restrictions unfairly discriminate against Jewish and Muslim students, Nussbaum said.
Anti-religious individuals identify dominant religious practices - such as Sundays off from work - as secular norms. But they are typically hostile to deviations from that trend, Nussbaum said.
Finally, Nussbaum said anti-religious advocates tend to assert their cause with unhealthy smugness. "This (is) not a very good stance to take towards one's fellow citizens in a world full of mystery and complexity. It's a very good bet that nobody, not even the anti-religious, have the ultimate solution to questions about the meanings of life and death that have plagued humanity ever since humanity began to exist," she said.
The Meiklejohn Lecture is organized by the Taubman Center for Public Policy.
