Locke: Religious Toleration

RESUMEN:Este trabajo tiene por objeto analizar la articulación entre la afirmación del carácter racional de la fe, esto es, su dimensión latitudinaria, el escepticismo epistemológico, y su derivación práctica en un concepto de tolerancia restringido al interior del protestantismo. Se subrayará, en este sentido, el carácter estratégico de la articulación entre racionalidad de la fe y escepticismo, en cuanto permite apelar a la ignorancia con vistas a la tolerancia, sin por ello dejar de sostener la interpretación protestante del cristianismo, en (...) detrimento de la interpretación católica.PALABRAS CLAVE:LOCKE - LATITUDINARISMO - ESCEPTICISMO - TOLERANCIA - PROTESTANTISMOABSTRACT:This paper aims to analyze the articulation between faith rationality assertion, i.e. its latitudinarian aspect, its epistemological skepticism, and its practical implication in a restricted concept of tolerance within Protestantism. In this regard, we will emphasize the strategic feature of the link between faith rationality and skepticism, as it allows appealing to ignorance towards tolerance, without dropping the Protestant interpretation of Christianity, to the detriment of Catholic interpretation.KEYWORDS:LOCKE - LATITUDINARIANISM - SKEPTICISM - TOLERATION - PROTESTANTISM. (shrink)

RESUMENEn este trabajo quiero examinar la Carta sobre la tolerancia de John Locke, con el propósito de considerar los diferentes tipos de argumentos que propone para justificar la tolerancia en materia de religión y valorar su relevancia para el lector actual. Aunque la línea argumental principal de la Carta es insatisfactoria, cabe encontrar una justiicación alternativa, mucho más afin con la defensa que el liberalismo contemporáneo hace de la libertad de conciencia.PALABRAS CLAVETOLERANCIA-RELIGIÓN-LIBREALISMO-LOCKEABSTRACTIn this paper I will examine John Locke'se Letter (...) concerning toleration, with the aim of reviewing the different arguments he adduces to justify religious toleration and of assessing their relevance for the contemporary reader. Althought the Letter's main argument is not satisfactory, it is possible to find an alternative justification, in line with the freedom of conscience defended by contemporary liberalism.KEYWORDSTOLERATION-RELIGION-LIBERALISM-LOCKE. (shrink)

John Locke was one of the first modern thinkers to publish a work devoted entirely to the theme of tolerance in the late seventeenth century. In his work, however, Locke presents limits: atheists are not tolerated. Thus, the aim of this article is to think about this tension in the Lockean political thought.

John Locke's theory of toleration is generally seen as advocating the privatization of religion. This interpretation has become conventional wisdom: secularization is widely understood as entailing the privatization of religion, and the separation of religion from power. This book turns that conventional wisdom on its head and argues that Locke secularizes religion, that is, makes it worldly, public, and political. In the name of diverse citizenship, Locke reconstructs religion as persuasion, speech, and fashion. He insists on a consensus that human (...) rights are sacred insofar as humans are the creatures, and thus, the property of God. Drawing on a range of sources beyond Locke's own writings, Pritchard portrays the secular not as religion's separation from power, but rather as its affiliation with subtler, and sometimes insidious, forms of power. As a result, she captures the range of anxieties and conflicts attending religion's secularization: denunciations of promiscuous bodies freed from patriarchal religious and political formations, correlations between secular religion and colonialist education and conversion efforts, and more recently, condemnations of the coercive and injurious force of unrestricted religious speech. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to show links and parallels between Locke’s concept of the state of nature and the Unitarian (Socinian) denial of original sin. At first I will give an overview of the Unitarian history and thought, then I will logically and philologically demon- strate a parallelism of Locke’s hidden anthropology and the Unitarian doctrine on human being, with data of Locke’s Unitarian readings, especially writings of a Transylvanian theologian in the late 16th century, György Enyedi.

In its controversial 1990 Smith decision, the American Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause does not exempt the sacramental use of peyote from state laws prohibiting drug use. Smith overturned nearly three decades of legal precedent, but it failed to articulate a clear or comprehensive rule for subsequent religious liberty cases. This study addresses the lacuna in the Court's free exercise jurisprudence. It attempts to answer two questions: What are the grounds for the right to religious (...) freedom? And, how ought that right be protected under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment? ;Chapter One begins with John Locke's philosophical defense of religious liberty. I examine the argument of A Letter Concerning Toleration in light of Locke's epistemological writings. This leads me to suggest that Locke's most fundamental argument for religious toleration is found in his aspiration for men to govern their lives according to the limits of reason. ;Chapters Two, Three, and Four examine religious liberty in the political thought of three of America's leading founding fathers: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. I attempt to explain what each founder meant by the right to religious freedom and how each defended that right philosophically and politically. ;Chapter Five moves from political theory to constitutional law. I translate the founders' principles of religious liberty into doctrinal rules for contemporary jurisprudence. I also set forth the five basic types of issues that arise under the Free Exercise Clause. I then apply the founders' principles to these issues. This process demonstrates the degree to which the founders would have disapproved of the Supreme Court's free exercise jurisprudence and the degree to which the founders agree and disagree with one another. ;I conclude with further discussion of the differences among Jefferson's, Madison's, and Washington's principles. This study reveals that the founders did not share a uniform understanding of the right to religious liberty. Nevertheless, within the founders' thought I find a principled standard for contemporary free exercise jurisprudence. (shrink)

Expecting the imminent triumph of religious and political absolutism Locke tries, in »A Letter concerning Toleration«, to define the true Christian and the true church. He invites his readers to differentiale between civil goverment and religious communities. A church is a voluntary association, the members of which are hold together by the common hope of salvation. In this association there is no need for power and force, which are necessary in civil government. Pursuing this theme in a subtile way Locke (...) develops the reformatorical doctrine of the two kingdoms. (shrink)