The uneasy alliance: liberalism, conservatism and religious belief.

• Author: Coman, Brian J.
• Position: 151441499
• Pages: 59(7)

We hear a great deal these days about the value of liberal democracy in allowing the free expression of all forms of religious belief. Very often, this is contrasted with the situation in Communist China or in some Islamic countries. And, of course, there is a good deal of truth in all of this. Modern Western democracies generally do allow all forms of religious beliefs while many non-democratic countries openly or covertly suppress certain religious practices. A current example would be the suppression of the Falun Gong movement in China.

But the situation is not quite as simple as it may seem. For one, the very term liberal is problematical. What is modern liberalism? How does it differ from conservatism or, for that matter, socialism? Again, we need to examine much more closely what modern liberal thinkers mean by "freedom of religious belief". I want to argue that religious beliefs are protected under liberalism only insofar as they are practised privately but are regarded as threats as soon as they enter the public domain. The religion that liberalism protects is a gelded religion. There is, in fact, a rather uneasy alliance between liberalism and religion. The former allows for the free expression of the latter, but then is equally effective in preventing religion from entering the realm of public affairs.

No doubt, many people in Australia today would regard a liberal as a person who supports the Liberal Party and, if you asked them what the term conservative means (in relation to political thought) you would probably get the same answer. But, of course, in the not-too-distant past, the terms liberal and conservative identified two opposing systems of political/philosophical thought. It is important, then, that we try to understand just what the classical definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" entail.

Classical liberalism may be traced back to the ideas of 17th-century thinkers such as Hobbes and Locke, but perhaps its most famous proponent was John Stuart Mill (1806- 1873). At the centre of classical liberalism is the idea of individual freedom. Locke supposed that this freedom was a "natural right" (i.e., not dependent upon human laws or specific religious ideas). Mill went even further to suppose that liberalism could be encapsulated in "one very simple principle"--the idea that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others" (On Liberty, opening paragraph). "Over himself," Mill says, "over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." Moreover, for Mill, liberty also entails absolute freedom in the promulgation of ideas--the individual is free to express ideas, irrespective as to whether such ideas are true or false.

In classical liberalism, these ideas on the primacy of individual freedom are linked to those of another liberal thinker, Adam Smith (1723-1790). Smith believed that freedom of the individual should be linked to economic freedom. In his own day, he attacked government restrictions on trade which he thought were hindering industrial expansion. In fact, he attacked most forms of government interference in the economic process, including tariffs, arguing that this creates inefficiency and higher prices in the long term. The individual's self-interest, he supposed, would generally serve to benefit the wider community:

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their...