CHAPTER 2 Tore Lindholm, Philosophical and Religious Justifications of Freedom of Religion or Belief
Tore Lindholm's Philosophical and Religious and Justifications of Religion or Belief attempts to answer at least one of the questions left by Evans' historical chapter: is religious freedom relegated to playing an essentially passive role in acknowledging and perhaps sanctifying the relativizing of values that pervades our age? Or can it provide social structures within which deeply divided worldviews can live together? In order for the latter option to be a possibility, it is vital to be able to elucidate public justification(s) of the universally applicable human right to freedom of religion or belief in a religiously, philosophically, and culturally division-prone world. A solution to this problem needs to go beyond being intellectually well-grounded and socially stable. It must facilitate both mutual respect and solidarity across religious and life-stance divides and the unflinching integrity of each normative tradition. For Lindholm, the task of philosophy in approaching this challenge is "meta-facilitation" of freedom of religion carried out by assuming the role of a Lockean "under-labourer" tasked with clearing conceptual ground rather than that of the Platonic "philospher-king". In Lindhom's view, the major contemporary approaches to the dilemmas of relgious plurality, difference and conflict-traditional half-hearted toleration, religious relativism pr skepticism, salvific pluralism, privatization or marginalization of religious commitment, and an exclusion of religion from the public square (whether by strident laicist politics or by a hegemonic secularist culture)-are all found wanting. Lindholm's alternative is to draw on the emerging worldwide public commitment to human dignity as a shared focus for overlapping justificationof freedom of religion or belief. Arguing the case for an expressly pluralist approach, he contends that the challenge is for every life stance (whether religious or secular) to generate and publicize espousals of the human right to freedom of religion or belief by embracing the doctrine of inherent dignity while remaining well-grounded in the heartland of their particular normative traditions. Once our differing, perhaps even incompatible, justificatory platforms are publicly recognized to converge instable and internally legitimate support of this justificandum , purdentially based toleration will no longer be sseen to suffice , and the inadequate halfway houses posed by relativisim, skepticim, salvific pluralism, privatization, or exclusivist secularism will no longer be compelling ways out of the dilemmas of religious and life-stance diifference. The dynamics of overlapping justification (as opposed to mere overlapping consensus) make it possible for one group to come to understand and trust another group's commitment to freedom of religion or belief and mutual respect, even if the premises of the justification are not totally shared. This in turn makes it possible to achieve "mutual respect with uncompromised integrity".
Lindholm's argument in this short form sounds abstract, but in fact it is is enlivened with historical, sociological, and theological considerations, drawing on many of the great pioneers in articulating particular religious grounding for the universal, value of religious freedom, from Emperor Ashoka to Pope John XXXIII. In the spirit of contibuting to the practical aims of the deskbook, the chapter concludes with a section advocating the priority of cooperation across relgiious divides as a means for the realization of a common commitment to-and enjoyment of-the human right the freedom of relgion or belief.
