Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Why the secular state has no moral mandate – Opinion – ABC Religion & Ethics (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Thus, Locke proposed a functional separation of religion and the apparatus of the state. The state should act for entirely secular reasons, based on knowledge that pertains solely to the order of this world. It should place no reliance on the doctrines of one or another religion. The different religious sects, cults and churches, in turn, should not pursue political power or influence in an attempt to impose their doctrines on the citizenry.

History has been kind to Locke, and I suggest that the model he put forward is plausible, independently of the urgent need for seventeenth-century religious rivals to find a modus vivendi. His arguments are deeper than that, and more principled.


---SPSmith

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