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Article: Is a coherent theory of religious freedom possible?
- Article from:
- Constitutional Commentary
- Article date:
- March 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Constitutional Commentary, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Is a theory of religious freedom possible? It's obvious that we can and do talk about and argue about issues of religious freedom--school prayer, aid to parochial schools, and so forth. But a "theory" entails something more than "talk," or ad hoc argumentation.(1) More specifically, we would treat talk as falling short of being a "theory of religious freedom" on either of two grounds that are relevant here.
First, we sometimes distinguish between a "theory" and something else that we might describe as a compromise or "modus vivendi." A modus vivendi doesn't give us an internally consistent set of principles capable of generating answers to questions of ...