Religious Establishment and Autonomy

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In Volume I of Religion and the Constitution, Kent Greenawalt explains the rationale for non-establishment of religion, in part, by claiming that "personal autonomy is most fully recognized and the flourishing of religion itself is best served if the government does not sponsor religious understandings and practices." (1) This sentence ends with a parenthetical promising that this subject will be addressed in Volume II. In that volume, he defines autonomy as "unfettered freedom to choose among various options, whether or not an absence of freedom restricts one's exercise of his convictions" (p. 9). He then writes: "In this sense, even if every citizen is free to practice religion as she chooses, including the freedom to practice no religion, full autonomy of choice is limited if the government 'stacks the deck' in favor of one religion or all religions" (p. 9).

Just how is the freedom to choose among options fettered by the government supporting one or another religion? Greenawalt's explanation of this point is fragmentary and inconclusive. That such a superb scholar falters on such a fundamental point suggests to me that autonomy is a mask for other concerns that Greenawalt is reluctant, for respectable but ultimately unpersuasive reasons, to spell out.

The most obvious objection to an autonomy-based argument against "deck-stacking" is that it makes no sense to denounce the deliberate creation of choice-influencing circumstances. People's preferences and choices are inevitably shaped in non-rational ways by their environment. George Sher asks, "exactly what is disrespectful about taking (benign) advantage of a causal process that would occur anyway?" (2) More specifically, establishment, unless it involves tangible disabilities …