Locke: A Letter Containing Toleration

religion and modernity, religion

Notes

• Writes about the toleration of religion and state, wrt to the magistrate and priests
• Magistrate power reaches only certain civil confinements
  • locke distinguishes between “civil interest”: - “life, liberty, health, idolency of the body, property”
• notes that the care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate, it’s committed to a higher being
  • as a result, compelling people towards religion is bad
  • magistrates and magistracy doesn’t make humanity or christianity mutually exlcusive
    • notes the parallels of persuasion and command, arguments and penalties
      • religion as persuasion and civil as punishment
  • fundalmentally argues taht laws are of no force w/o penalties
    • is this true?
    • there are laws that are unenforced who’s purpose is to segregate different groups
      • hart’s theory of law
      • jaywalking
  • if we accept that laws and penalties are enforced from top down, this draws a relationship to al-Fadl: What Type of Law is Islamic Law, who argued that islamic law is “bottom up”
  • “penalties cannot produce belief”
    • which is also somewhat strange in light of Iran-Iraq POW’s
• he takes a church to be “voluntary”, from the ground up
• when a magistrate starts imposing sect-based rules, man has replaced god as the arbiter of souls
• what gives the church the right to excommunicate people?
  • but excommunication cannot deprive people of physical property
  • excommunication is a dissolution of the union and the person
• what does toleration require from people in power?
  • whenever church authority is sprung, the ecclesaticality confines it to the church and makes it unable to be extended to civil
• if a man’s soul is their own, who has authoirty over a neglected soul?
• if nothing that belongs to divine worship be left to human discretion, how do churches have the power to order time and place of worship?
  • locke states that religious worship is distinguished between the worship itself and the circumstances around it
    • parts of worship are about worshiping to god
    • circumstances are the necessary part of worship, but not directly to him
• laws w/ church and the magistrate
  • whatever is lawful in the commonwealth cannot be prohibited by the magistrate
  • whatever is lawful for usage cannot be unlawful for acts of religious worship
  • when no harm is caused by religious beliefs, the magistrate should not attempt to legisliate
• if a magistrate cannot legislate for religious beliefs, what if he believes it to be for the public good?
  • private judgement does not give right to be excluded from obligation of law, so the private judgement of a magistrate is not allowed to impose new laws on his subjects
• views state power as absolute, but holds a strange understanding of what should be tolerated
  • mentions the toleration of civil assemblies vs eccleiastical ones
  • disagrees with civil assemblies are open, free to enter, where as religious ones are more private
  • toleration of new assmelbies is not to be prejudiced

Discussion

• how do we make the secular tractable?
• religious of the sacred, relationship between the sacred and secular?
• how do we go from religion, to secular, to political?
• locke wrote after the civil war?
• are the categories useful?
• religion as a tradition?
• locke ignores the idea of semi-religious law, such as muslim laws in India
• can souls be bartered? is religion a property of man that cannot be taken or used?
• power in premodern socities is seen as neutral, and seen as a fundalmental good to be acquired
• is kubali khan establishing a hierarchy of state
• religion is voluntary for who?
• locke is (maybe) looking out for the interests of property owners
• predication of reason? is reason the enforcer of the split
• toleration, but toleration of what?
  • muslims and catholics cannot participate, as they believe another primus
  • spiritual subjects - ideal of spiritual subjects?
• locke elevates protestant ideals of a civil religion, and then asks that other religions conforms to it
• is locke drawing upon a protestant shared tradition?
• locke sees toleration as the tool to protect both religion and property, where drawing clear boundaries allows both to be cultivated