A Questionable Faith in the Power of Reason

Conservative Christian communities met the US Supreme Court’s 2015 landmark decision on marriage equality, Obergefell v. Hodges, with alarm, surmising that the government would transgress upon their sincerely held religious beliefs by compelling county clerks—such as Kim Davis of Rowan County, Kentucky, who held born-again Christian views—to issue same-sex marriage licenses. The LGBT community, on the other hand, feared that religious prejudice would trump their hard-fought victory in the courts by encouraging resistance to their newly-won rights, just as racial prejudice delayed the recognition of equality for African Americans in the aftermath of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Given the contemporary atmosphere of American political partisanship, the conflict between civil rights and religious rights seems irresolvable. In Religious Freedom in an Egalitarian Age, Nelson Tebbe, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, offers nuanced legal arguments to elucidate the tensions between the protection of religious belief and practice and the right of the LGBT community to equal treatment before the law. His approach is simultaneously the strength and weakness of his book. Tebbe invokes a sanguine faith in rationalism that can resolve the “current impasse between religious freedom and equality law” (198). His view “presumes deep respect for the inherent capacities and worth of every citizen, without exception” (199). He believes that a rational consensus on constitutional rights is possible in at least some instances if participants in the public forum follow his approach, marked by methodological and substantive components.

Faith · Free Exercise Clause · Political science · Politics · Prejudice (legal term) · Sociology · Supreme court · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy

• The Enigma of Reason

  Liam Gerrard, Hugo Mercier et al.•Enigma of Reason•2017

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