For those interested in the exploding work on the freedom of the church (and you should all be!), do see Paul Horwitz’s new tour de force draft article, Freedom of the Church Without Romance, a typically graduated and thoughtful piece by a defender of ecclesial liberty.
I haven’t yet read the entire piece, but what I have read is rich and very interesting. I touch on ideas of liberty of the church in my chapter on free exercise applications of the tragic-historic method in The Tragedy of Religious Freedom–in Chapter 9 where I discuss the Hosanna-Tabor case. But because (I think!) my view of freedom of the church is perhaps not quite as potent in certain ways as is Paul’s (it is subject to perhaps greater particularistic assessment by courts and is less committed to the general superstructure of Horwitzian First Amendment institutionalism, even as qualified in this piece), I wonder whether, for me, the suggestion of embracing a “strong non-establishment regime” follows as powerfully as it does for Paul (if one understands a “strong” disestablishmentarian regime in the way that I suspect Paul does). Some of Paul’s questions toward the end of the piece about arguments involving church freedom alongside others concerning equal access of religious entities in the provision of services do not seem to me to give churches “a competitive advantage” that is troubling for Establishment Clause purposes (one can believe this, I think, and also agree with Paul about the importance of the economics of religion quite apart from the issue of its constitutional weight), though I understand the point that Paul is making. At any rate, the piece is well worth a good, long read. The abstract follows.
This Article is part of a symposium issue titled “Freedom of the Church in the Modern Era.” Freedom of the church, roughly, connotes the independent nature or sovereignty of the church. The most dramatic moment in its development was the eleventh century Investiture Controversy, with its confrontation between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV at Canossa, but it has a long prior and subsequent history. Recently, with the renewed scholarly interest in the institutional rights of churches and religious organizations and the Supreme Court’s decision affirming the “ministerial exception” doctrine in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC,the idea of “freedom of the church” has taken on new champions–and critics.
This Article, from an author who has written supportively about freedom of the church and/or religious institutionalism in prior work, takes a deliberately unromantic look at freedom of the church. It evaluates it through two useful disciplinary lenses: history, and the economics of religion.
Both historical and economic analysis of the concept of”freedom of the church” suggest the following conclusions: (1) The concept should be treated carefully and with a full awareness of its mixed history, without undue romanticism on the part of its champions–or a confident conclusion on the part of its critics that it is no longer necessary. (2) Whatever the concept of “freedom of the church” means today, the present version is decidedly diminished and chastened, a shadow of the medieval version. Supporters of freedom of the church should welcome that fact. Freedom of the church persists, and may have continuing value, precisely because it has become so domesticated. (3) There are solid historical and economic grounds for some form of freedom of the church or religious institutional autonomy. In particular, religion’s status as a credence good, whose value and reliability is certified by religious agents such as ministers, strongly suggests that state interference with religious employment relations can be dangerous to a church’s well-being and long-term survival. (4) The history and economics of religion also teach us something about the optimal conditions for freedom of the church–the conditions under which it is likely to do the most good and the least harm. In particular, they suggest that champions of freedom of the church ought to welcome religious pluralism and a strong non-establishment regime.
The Article closes with some speculation about why there has been a recent revival of interest in freedom of the church, including the possibility that its resurgence, even if it is fully justified, also involves an element of rent-seeking by religious institutions.
There are two broader underlying suggestions as well. First, there are good reasons to support some version of freedom of the church, but it deserves a more critical and nuanced examination by friends and adversaries alike. Second, legal scholars writing on church-state issues have paid far too little attention to the literature on the economics of religion.