Religious Liberty and Religious Particularism in a Pluralistic Society: Insights from the ‘Global Ethics’ of Küng and Nussbaum

Abstract

Many insist that only religious inclusivists can meaningfully espouse religious liberty as a universal public policy, because exclusivist perspectives inherently undermine the notion of religious freedom through their particularist truth claims. This study, however, challenges this assumption. Religious exclusivists can simultaneously, consistently, and robustly endorse a public policy of religious liberty for all, without resorting to normative pluralism or religious inclusivism. To make this argument, the article will first examine the support of a universal and global ethic in Hans Küng (an influential, religious inclusivist) and then the description of a universal and global ethic in Martha Nussbaum (whose approach may be interfaced with religious particularism and exclusivism). While the former appealed to a commonality of shared content (a common core of ethical and related beliefs), a shared telos (a similar moral transformation of adherents), and a shared destiny (effectively leading to the same Ultimate Reality), the latter primarily contended for a commonality of shared capacity (the human conscience) rooted in basic human dignity. Nussbaum’s model, reflecting themes found in the seventeenth-century work of Roger Williams, can be consistently interfaced with a Christian particularism, in which Jesus Christ alone (not any political authority) is the rightful Lord of the conscience.

1. Introduction

In 1993, the 103rd United States Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), with widespread support among both Democrats and Republicans. Astoundingly, the House of Representatives passed the bill unanimously, and all but three members of the Senate voted in favor as well. With wide acclaim, President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law on 16 November 1993. The law “ensures that interests in religious freedom are protected,” by requiring that strict scrutiny be applied to any law that burdens the free exercise of religion and by stipulating that such laws be justified through recourse to the least restrictive means of pursuing the compelling government interest. In 1997, the Supreme Court struck down the RFRA’s application to state governments, while allowing the law to remain in force on the federal level. A number of states responded by passing their own RFRAs, thus enforcing the law’s applicability on the state level as well.

The 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act was quickly and frequently cited in subsequent legal trials, and researchers estimate that 18% of the cases within the first three years involved either Judaism, Islam, or Native American religions, even though such religious groups made up only 3% of the American population (Richardson 2004). Such statistics reflect the changing landscape of American religiosity, as the United States has become increasingly pluralistic.1 Accelerated globalization and large-scale immigration contribute to this growing religious diversity.2 Amplified pluralism is also reflected by the exponential growth of the religious “nones,” as demonstrated by the recent Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project (Pew Research Center 2022). Religious liberty as public policy within “an increasingly pluralistic global environment” raises important questions (Hick 1997; Netland 2001; N. King 2008; Hedges and Halafoff 2015). Does religious pluralism logically necessitate religious inclusivism? Is an exclusivist religious perspective (one that claims to be the sole or unique path to God) truly able to support universal religious liberty as a public policy? Or does a robust approach to religious liberty within pluralistic societies and a globalized milieu require an inclusivist religious perspective?3

This present article examines this question through a distinctive lens—a comparison of two leaders in the diverse “global ethics” movement(s), Hans Küng and Martha Nussbaum.4 Küng labored on an ecumenical project known as the Weltethos (“Global Ethic”), and Nussbaum developed a “capabilities theory” that offered an alternative approach to “global ethics.”5 As a result, these two highly influential public intellectuals both claimed to be spokespersons of “global ethics” but differed in their respective approaches to religious liberty.6

More specifically, this essay will compare Hans Küng’s views of religious freedom, rooted in his early works (“Church and Freedom,” 1963; “The Freedom of Religions,” 1966) and progressively developed through ecumenical dialog, with a more recent volume of Martha Nussbaum dedicated to the same topic (Liberty of Conscience: In Defense of America’s Tradition of Religious Equality, 2008) (Nussbaum 2008a). In 1966, Küng was still writing as a Roman Catholic theologian addressing fellow Catholics, rather than as the renowned leader of the ecumenical/inter-religious and Weltethos movements, as he would later become.7 But the roots of his later, pluralistic-leaning inclusivism were already in place.8 Nussbaum’s 2008 volume, in spite of its provincial connection to the American context in particular, represents her mature reflections rooted in several decades of work in global ethics and global justice.9 Her book taps into the distinctive work of Roger Williams (the Colonial leader and erstwhile Baptist) in order to interface religious particularism with a robust defense of religious liberty as public policy. Following Williams, Nussbaum accentuates the commonality of human capacity (the faculty of “conscience” in particular), conjoined with an endorsement of the universal freedom of conscience (religious liberty).10 Ironically, Küng’s inclusivist approach ultimately clouds the role of personal volition, while the perspective described by Nussbaum could (through a model of “voluntary religion”) unite religious particularism with a robust public policy of religious liberty.

2. Hans Küng: Relevant Biography

Hans Küng was a Swiss-born intellectual.11 Although forced to leave the Roman Catholic faculty of the University of Tübingen in 1979, he continued to teach there as a professor of ecumenical theology,12 and he served as an emeritus professor at Tübingen after 1996. Küng is famous for his influential work in ecumenical and interreligious dialog (Küng et al. 1993; Küng and Ching 1989; Küng 1980).

His 1991 book Global Responsibility: In Search of a New World Ethic presented a research program he called Weltethos (“Global Ethic”).13 Such a “Global Ethic” is “a minimal basic consensus” of “fundamental ethical demands,” or “a fundamental consensus on binding values, irrevocable standards, and personal attitudes” representing “the minimum of what the religions of the world already have in common now in the ethical sphere.”14 Küng served as the President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic (Stiftung Weltethos, with a public website at http://www.weltethos.org/ (accessed on 13 March 2025)). Küng’s “global ethic” was advanced in a co-authored editorial, entitled “Toward a ‘Universal Declaration of Global Ethos,” which appeared in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies in 1991.15 The resulting “Towards a Global Ethic: An Initial Declaration” (or “Declaration Toward a Global Ethic”) was signed by religious and spiritual leaders from around the world at the 1993 Parliament of World Religions.16 For Küng, a “global ethic” is not “just wishful thinking” but “a realistic vision” and “a forward-looking vision,” even a genuine necessity in our globalized, pluralistic context.17 His “global ethic” approach has been applied to various issues.18

Although Küng was stripped of his formal license to teach as a Roman Catholic theologian in 1979, his priestly position was not revoked. In a 2002 essay, Küng explained,

My permission to teach was withdrawn by the church, but nevertheless I retained my chair and my institute (which was separated from the Catholic faculty). For two further decades I remained unswervingly faithful to my church in critical loyalty, and to the present day I have remained professor of ecumenical theology and a Catholic priest in good standing. I affirm the papacy for the Catholic Church, but at the same time indefatigably call for a radical reform of it in accordance with the criterion of the gospel.

(Küng 2002, p. xviii)

Küng’s tussles with the Catholic Church (including the dogma of papal infallibility) continued for over four decades.19 In April of 2010, he published an “open letter” in the Irish Times, calling upon all Roman Catholic bishops to consider six proposals of “ongoing renewal,” including the summoning of another Vatican council (Küng 2010a). He passed away in 2021 at the age of ninety-three.

Although Küng’s personal pilgrimage toward a “global ethic” drew him further toward religious pluralism, the seminal roots of his perspectives on religious liberty were already evident in the 1960s, when he played a personal role in the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). Leading up to the Council, Küng had authored a call for Catholic renewal entitled Konzil und Wiedervereinigung (1961; translated in 1962 as The Council, Reform and Reunion). In 1962, he was appointed a peritus (expert theological advisor) to members of Vatican II. Hans Küng and Joseph Ratzinger (who would later become Pope Benedict XVI) were the youngest theologians present at the Council (Yzermans 1964). In Küng’s own words, Vatican II witnessed the “achievement of liturgical reform, religious freedom, ecumenism and inter-religious dialog.”20 One of the official documents to come out of the Council was Dignitas humanae, a “Declaration on Religious Freedom.”21 It was the first “official declaration” about other religions in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.22 Another significant Roman Catholic academic working in the area of religious liberty, both before and after Vatican II, was John Courtney Murray.23 In 1967, he published his own commentary on Dignitas humanae (Murray 1967, pp. 668–76).

During that same period, Küng himself developed a keen interest in religious liberty. In 1963, after the first session of the Second Vatican Council had finished, he toured the United States giving the lecture “The Church and Freedom,” thereby causing quite a stir in Roman Catholic circles. Commonweal magazine called the lecture a “controversial and widely applauded address.”24 Küng claimed that humanity “is already, as a whole, even though it does not know it, embraced by the liberating grace of God in Christ.”25 He confessed, “In the course of centuries, many faults have been committed by and in the Catholic Church against freedom of conscience.”26 He maintained that the Catholic Church’s call for freedom of conscience in the modern age had grown “stronger and clearer.”27 In this regard, he praised Pope John XXIII’s encyclical, Pacem in terris, which had declared, “Every human being has the right to honor God according to the dictates of an upright conscience and therefore the right to worship God privately and publicly.”28

During Küng’s American tour, he was welcomed to the White House by President John F. Kennedy.29 In 1964, he presented a paper at the “Patrick F. Healy Conference on Freedom and Man,” held at Georgetown University. His presentation, entitled “God’s Free Spirit in the Church,” was subsequently included in the collected volume that published the conference proceedings.30 The final result of Küng’s speaking engagements in American universities was published in Freedom Today (“The Freedom of Religions,” 1966).31 He dedicated the work to two Jesuit universities: Boston College (which had initially invited him to the United States) and Saint Louis University (which had granted him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws).32

3. Hans Küng: Relevant Perspectives

“God’s Free Spirit in the Church” (1965) begins by stating, “With all its failures, the Second Vatican Council has achieved a powerful breakthrough toward a new freedom in the Catholic Church.” Yet, Küng acknowledged that “some well-meaning members” of the Church “felt a certain anxiety, even some fear, when faced with this new freedom, candor and adaptability.”33 Küng himself was moving away from the particularism of traditional Roman Catholicism. He believed that God’s Spirit is at work across the world’s religions, to varying degrees. “He works not only in the Catholic Church, but wherever he chooses: throughout Christendom. And, finally, he works not only in Christendom, but again, wherever he elects: in the whole world.”34 In sum, “God’s Spirit is subject to no other authority than the authority of his own freedom.”35

The next year, in his essay “The Freedom of Religions” (1966), Küng addressed the tension he felt within the teaching extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. He stated, “Again and again this ‘Outside the church, no salvation’ has been repeated and re-emphasized. But the situation has grown more and more difficult.”36 Küng pointed to statistics showing that of the three billion inhabitants of the Earth at the time, only about 950 million were professing Christians, of which 584 million were Roman Catholics.37 He also pointed to the long history of humanity prior to the incarnation of Christ—“countless millions who have lived in the past outside the Catholic Church and altogether outside Christianity.”38 Moreover, Küng peered into the future, predicting that the non-Christian nations of Asia and Africa “are going to outstrip by far the Christian nations of the West.”39 He concluded, “We, the Catholic Church and Christendom generally, are clearly a small, insignificant minority.”40

Küng added two further musings. First, the age of colonialism was over. “We all know that the situation of the Christian missions, excessively linked as they have been with that age and its political, cultural, and social system, is not being made any easier by this change. They are no longer borne along by the current but have to swim against it.”41 Second, non-Christian religions had not “slowly but surely withered away,” as some overly optimistic Christian missiologists of the previous century had prognosticated.42 Rather, “the great non-Christian world religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, not only are not withering away but are developing with fresh vigor.”43 European Christendom could no longer play the theological “ignoramus” when it came to the world religions.44 Küng declared, “The realization is spreading in the Catholic Church that it is not going to be possible, at least in the foreseeable future, to ‘convert’ all the pagans, old and new, to evangelize the world’s religions, to Christianize the world; that on the contrary there are going to be, for the foreseeable future—and perhaps to the end of time—not only individual pagans but a pagan world, world religions, and religious pluralism.”45

Küng then tackled the question head on: “Is there salvation outside the Church or not?”46 He argued that the question deserved either a definite “Yes” or a definite “No.”47 And he concluded, “The fact that men can be saved outside the Catholic Church is no longer disputed by anybody.”48 As evidence, he summoned the newly disseminated “Constitution on the Church” from the Second Vatican Council (21 November 1964). He interpreted the document as teaching that sincere, upright non-Christians were actually within the church, though only inadvertently and unconsciously so. But he critiqued this “theological construct” as follows:

Such a concept of the Church is rightly rejected by thinking non-Christians as a piece of pure theological construction and speculation; they feel that it is a somewhat impudent notion in us Christians, when they explicitly and of their own full volition do not choose to be members of the Church of Christ, to incorporate them tacitly in the Church against their will and their express choice, as though this were something that be done over their heads.49

He surmised that the formula “Outside the Church no salvation” (extra ecclesiam nulla salus) was easily misunderstood, could be damaging to the Church’s mission, and therefore should “no longer be used.”50

In the place of this Church-centered formula, Küng proposed a Christocentric approach to the world’s religions—in the case of both traditional religions and “quasi-religions” or “substitute religions.”51 One can insist, he contended, that there is no salvation outside of God’s grace objectively given in Jesus Christ, even though one believes that there is salvation outside the Church.52 Küng considered his framework to be a particularly Christian standpoint. Yet he insisted that a “dogmatic” underpinning need not entail an “exclusive” perspective.53 While the world religions are in error, they proclaim truth about the true God.54 Moreover, they all share a common body of core ethical and related religious beliefs (similar to “core pluralism” or “reductive pluralism”), and they all similarly transform the ethical character of their adherents. Furthermore, all the major world religions reflect a genuine orientation toward Ultimate Reality and lead to a similar experience of Ultimate Reality, and therefore all are ultimately salvific (“religious inclusivism”).55

Küng summoned biblical evidence that God reached beyond the boundaries of Israel and the Church in his salvific work among humanity—“every man is intended to find his salvation within his own historical condition.”56 “As against the ‘extraordinary’ way of salvation which is the Church, the world religions can be called the ‘ordinary’ way of salvation for non-Christian humanity.”57 The world religions recognize the alienation and helplessness of humanity, and they look toward transformation and redemption, espousing courage and strength in the face of the human condition. In a sense, claimed Küng, they teach the truth of Christ, even though they do not recognize it as the Truth it is.58 In this manner, according to Küng, the world religions fall short of the revelation in Christ. “Within every true message uttered by the world religions there always lingers the illusion of myth; in all their yearning for God there remains a denial and flight from God; in all their hope for God’s grace, a concealed self-redemption; in all their genuine conversion, an inadvertent turning-away.”59

Through the decades, Küng increasingly transitioned toward an overtly Christocentric framework with “maximal” openness to other religions, reached through critical ecumenical dialog.60 Küng’s pivotal works such a Christ sein and Das Christentum developed his framing Christology, but he retained his inclusivist approach, while denying that he was a full “religious pluralist” who believed that all religions are equally valid.61 He explained, “If Christian theology today asserts that all men—even in the world religions—can be saved, this certainly does not mean that all religions are equally true. … However much truth they exhibit in certain respects, which Christianity must affirm, they do not offer the truth for Christians.”62 The world religions are rightfully called “ways of salvation” only in “a relative sense.”63

Küng’s On Being a Christian (1976) opposed both an “exclusive particularism” that espoused a restrictive Gospel and a harmonizing or reductive syncretism that overlooked contradictory claims.64 He insisted that “the agreement must not be simplified,” “the differences must not be smoothed out,” and distinct creeds must not be subjected to an absolutized comparison of “utterly ambiguous inward religious experience.”65 In his summary of the ideal, “there would be neither arrogant absolutism, not accepting any other claim, nor a weak eclecticism, accepting a little of everything, but an inclusive Christian universalism claiming for Christianity not exclusiveness, but certainly uniqueness.”66

Küng’s 1986 essay “Towards an Ecumenical Theology of Religions” sought to avoid both “the absolutist position” (“one unique religion is true”) and “the relativist position” (“each religion is true” or “all religions are equally true”) by positing a “relationality” that “enables one to see every religion as a web of connections.” (Küng 1986a, pp. 119–20) Christianity is the only true religion “insofar as it testifies to the one true God as he revealed himself in Jesus Christ,” yet this “by no means precludes truth in other religions.” (Küng 1991a, p. 246) Therefore, Küng recommends the dual virtues of “dialogability” (willingness to communicate and to listen) and “steadfastness” (religious commitment).67

Küng delineated his twofold perspectivalism, an understanding of world religions from “outside” (“the view from without”) and from “inside” (“the view from within,” “from the viewpoint of the believing Christian”).68 From the “outside” perspective, “a religion is true and good when and to the extent that it is humane and that it protects and promotes rather than suppresses and destroys humanity.”69 From the “inside” perspective, “a religion is true and good when and to the extent that it allows traces of Christ to be detected in its teaching and practice.”70 This “inside” criterion can be applied directly to Christianity and only indirectly to other religions.”71 Elsewhere, Küng calls the “outside” view “an interreligious criteriology” and the “inside” view “the specifically Christian criterion.”72

Küng’s later works on a “global ethic” increasingly approached growing shades of religious pluralism. But even his increasingly inclusivist trajectory did not quell the pushback from fully pluralistic critics. Paul Knitter shares, “I have witnessed how much [Küng’s] own broad-mindedness and openness to other religions has grown.” (Knitter 1987, p. 224) “Yet,” adds Knitter, “despite this call to greater openness, it seems to some that Küng hangs on to a subtle, camouflaged narrowness.”73 Knitter posited that Küng stood before his own “theological Rubicon,” torn by his own hesitancy to move past any “decisive” or “final” normativity for Jesus Christ.74 He challenged Küng to abandon “the scourge of inclusivism” by transitioning all the way to a full pluralism.75 Scott Cowdell nudged Küng toward a pluralist endgame, by reframing his trajectory in an article entitled, “Hans Küng and World Religions: The Emergence of a Pluralist.” (Cowdell 1989, pp. 85–92l; Brewer 1993, pp. 198–215).

In sum, the roots of Küng’s approach can already be found in his early works which claimed that adherents of the world’s religions subjectively search for and discover transcendent truth apart from Christ, affirming that their possession of limited truth is objectively grounded in Christ. On the one hand, he maintained that “it is better not to call these pre-Christian religions ‘anonymously Christian,’ because it is precisely they themselves who do not know their own Christian character, though Christ does not deny his presence to them.”76 On the other hand, Küng insisted, “The men of the world religions are not Christians by profession, but by designation, by vocation and in some sense already by their affirmative response.”77 Although he increasingly opposed the language of “anonymous Christians,” he still endeavored to maintain a “normative” or “decisive” role for Jesus as the objective (though unacknowledged) mediator of the non-Christian’s purported relationship with God.78

4. Hans Küng: Analysis

One senses an underlying tension within Hans Küng’s approach, as formulated on the heels of the Second Vatican Council and as developed further in subsequent decades. As we have noted above, he opposed the “somewhat impudent notion” that added non-Christians as members of the Church against their own “full volition,” in the theological attempt “to incorporate them tacitly in the Church against their will and their express choice, as though this were something that had been done over their heads.”79 Yet, in his own way, Küng himself seems to have designated non-Christians as united with Christ against their own “full volition” and in a manner accomplished “over their heads.” His “theological construct” then informed his understanding of the mission of the Church. “The Church is this sign of invitation to the peoples so that from Christians de jure they may become Christians de facto; from Christians in spe, Christians in re; that from being Christians by designation and vocation they may become Christians by profession and witness.”80 Ironically, Küng’s inclusivist approach ultimately clouded the freedom of personal choice and conscious volition.81 Even Küng’s later publications and the work of others under his influence did not avoid similar critiques. Kate McCarthy notes that the 1993 “Global Ethic Declaration” “has been chastened for a kind of crypto-Christian and even imperialist orientation.”82 In this view, Küng’s decades-long trajectory moved from merely “committed dialogue” to an increasingly “open dialogue,” but without fully shedding a patronizing stance. Knitter panned Küng’s “inclusive Christology” as “really only a shade away from the theory of ‘anonymous Christianity’” which Küng himself had come to denounce.83

Notwithstanding, one key to the interpretation of the history of ideas is the important consideration of particular, historical contexts.84 One must situate Küng’s early positions and perspectives in the wake of Vatican II. Küng spoke of “a new life in the Church.”85 He hoped that “a new period has begun in the history of the Catholic Church: the period of a new and fruitful freedom in the Church.”86 Of course, as Küng’s understanding of religious liberty and his perception of the world’s religions developed in the decades following the 1960s, he became further removed from Vatican II and further estranged from the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless, one finds a similar yet chastened approach in his 1997 work A Global Ethic for Global Politics and Economics. The volume included “a personal postscript by a Christian for Christians,” which affirmed that “God is also active outside the church walls.”87 Along with this bypassing of ecclesiology, however, one also finds a Christocentric framework. “Solus Christus! Christ alone is enough—everything else is useless, valueless, uninteresting for faith.”88

Küng was not the only Vatican-era theologian grappling with the notion of religious liberty within a Roman Catholic framework (Hollenbach 2012, pp. 69–91). In a 1965 collected volume entitled Freedom and Man (Murray 1965a), John Courtney Murray proclaimed that the Roman Catholic Church had entered an “Age of Renewal,” in which “Freedom is the feature.” (Küng 1965, p. 12) Nevertheless, Murray acknowledged, “The full profile of the new age has not yet emerged into clear definition.”89 “The problem,” he cautioned, “is to understand what it may legitimately mean to say that a new age of Christian freedom begins to dawn.”90 Murray pointed to a fruitful theological grounding, the imago Dei found universally in all members of humanity, indicating intelligence, volition, and personal agency.91 Murray also composed a philosophical defense of religious liberty the following year (1966).92 J. Leon Hooper’s introduction to the essay comments that it is “the closest” that Murray “came to a ‘purely natural law’ philosophical argument.”93

According to Küng himself, a viable “Global Ethic” must avoid being so vague as to merely list trite or banal generalities but also avoid being so detailed as to exclude particular religious traditions (Hedges 2008, p. 155). Paul Ricoeur believed that such a “Global Ethic” amounted to a “disembodied formalism,” because ethical perspectives are embedded in narratives and particular symbolic traditions (Moyaert 2010, pp. 440–61). David Hollenbach argues that one weakness of Küng’s form of a “Global Ethic” is its simplistic “appeal to the overlaps of major religious traditions” without proper attention to “particularist strands” of those traditions, “the importance of the differences among people and of their distinctive identities,” and the “dignity of difference.”94 For many religious adherents, the “particularist strands” of their respective traditions are not merely facets of surface-level identity but matters of deep conviction.95 Scott Paeth posits that one way forward through this impasse is a foundation in the Realpolitik of shared need rather than in the conceptualization of shared values (Paeth 2007, p. 415). At this juncture, however, our discussion must turn toward another philosophical framework, the approach of Martha Nussbaum (a Reform Jewish scholar), which seems to give more space to the possibility of coalescing particularism (including models of Christian exclusivism) with a public policy of religious liberty.

5. Martha Nussbaum: Relevant Biography

Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago.96 She also serves on the board of the university’s Human Rights Program. Upon marriage to fellow classics scholar Alan Nussbaum in 1969 (a union deeply disapproved of by her Protestant father), Martha converted to Judaism.97 She retained the last name of Nussbaum and her association with Judaism even after their marriage ended in divorce in 1987 (And You May Ask Yourself 1995). On 16 August 2008, she became a bat mitzvah in a service at Temple K. A. M. Isaiah Israel in Chicago. During the service, she delivered a D’var Torah about the connection between genuine consolation and the pursuit of global justice (Nussbaum 2008c, pp. 18–20). Nussbaum has been listed among the world’s “Top 100 Intellectuals” by Foreign Policy on multiple occasions (2005, 2008, 2010). In 2008, when Prospect: The Leading Magazine of Ideas polled 20,000 readers to vote “for their top names” from the original longlist of 100, Nussbaum came in at #53. Hans Küng was not far behind, at #61.98

Nussbaum has wrangled with other global ethicists, including Judith Butler, the feministic philosopher and gender theorist. In a 1999 review in the New Republic, Nussbaum called Butler’s work “ponderous and obscure.”99 Gertrude Himmelfarb, an influential figure in Jewish conservative intellectual circles, opposed Nussbaum’s cosmopolitanism, which she faulted as having “a nice, high-minded ring to it” although “it is an illusion, and, like all illusions, perilous.”100 Nevertheless, Nussbaum’s global-ethicist pedigree is reflected in her “conviction that we are citizens of the world rather than merely accidental inhabitants of a particular country.”101 Nussbaum’s book Frontiers of Justice (2007) established her as a major theorist of global justice (Nussbaum 2007). And she has applied her global-ethics framework to various global-justice issues and public policies, especially “global inequality.” (Nussbaum 2005, pp. 188–214) Her portrayal of justice is conjoined with her understanding of moral sentiments and central human capabilities (Aviv 2016; Nussbaum 2000, 2001, 2004a, 2011, 2013a, 2016; Wall 2005, pp. 45–64).

In sum, Martha Nussbaum is a philosopher by training, a global ethicist, a respected academic, a scholar of constitutional law, and a public intellectual. Yet she is, by her own declaration, a religious philosopher (Nussbaum 2008a, p. 10). Although she was raised in an Episcopalian home, she is a convert to Judaism and a self-professed Reform Jew.102 As a member of a minority religious group, she has personally experienced the social and cultural marginalization of liminal religious status.

6. Martha Nussbaum: Relevant Perspectives

Nussbaum has written two major volumes related to the topic of the treatment of religious minorities. Her book The New Religious Intolerance (2012) discussed “overcoming the politics of fear in an anxious age.” While the volume was rooted in the “Euro-American” tradition, she acknowledged that “The specific principles I advocate are, historically, more American than European.”103 Nevertheless, her work was founded on a universal ethic. She declared, “Let’s start with an assumption that is widely shared: that all human beings are equal bearers of human dignity. In other words, all human beings possess human dignity, and with respect to that dignity they are equal. People may be unequal in wealth, class, talent, strength, achievement, or moral character—but all are equal as bearers of an inalienable basic human dignity that cannot be lost or forfeited.”104 She acknowledges that this is a key doctrine within the Judeo-Christian heritage, “in the form of the idea that all souls are equal in the sight of God.”105 Nevertheless, she claims, a particular religious perspective is not a necessary framework for the acceptance of universal human dignity. Upon this foundation of shared human dignity, Nussbaum builds a second principle, “to violate conscience is to conduct an assault on human dignity.”106 And she adds a further corollary, which she calls the “vulnerability premise,” that the conscience can be violated or damaged.107

Nussbaum’s The New Religious Intolerance is grounded in her earlier work The Liberty of Conscience (2008). This prior volume centers upon freedom of conscience within the framework of American traditions and tensions. 108 Paul Weithman has praised Liberty of Conscience as “Historically informed and philosophically sophisticated, thoroughly accessible and elegantly written … A shining example of American public philosophy at its best.”109 A review in the American Prospect declared, “One of the nation’s leading political and moral philosophers, Nussbaum is ardent in her admiration of America’s liberty and respect for different religious traditions.” And a piece in the New York Times Book Review described the volume as a “grand and penetrating discourse on religion and American law.”110

Notwithstanding, Nussbaum does not ground her views in American particularism, but in an understanding of the basic, human faculty of conscience. She contends that the conscience is both a universal and a vulnerable capacity.

I shall argue that the argument for religious liberty and equality in the tradition begins from a special respect for the faculty in human beings with which they search for life’s ultimate meaning. … Conscience is precious, worthy of respect, but it is also vulnerable, capable of being wounded and imprisoned. The tradition argues that conscience, on that account, needs a protected space around it within which people can pursue their search for life’s meaning (or not pursue it, if they choose).111

It is important to note that Nussbaum does not ground liberty of conscience in a pluralistic view of religions which maintains that all religions reflect ultimate truth to some or any degree. She does not appeal to a commonality of shared ethical and related religious beliefs among religious systems (“reductive pluralism”) or to a commonality of shared destiny (“religious inclusivism”). She rather insists,

Respect for fellow citizens does not mean saying or believing that their religious views are correct, or even that all religions are valid routes to the understanding of life. … Some religions especially today, do hold that other religions are valid routes to understanding, but others do not. The Respect-Conscience Principle just means respecting them as human beings with their own choices to make in religious matters, and a right to make those choices freely.112

In an article, Nussbaum has similarly acknowledged that one can believe that “one’s own religion is the only true religion and that other religions are false or morally incorrect,” and yet, at the same time, believe that “others deserve respect for their committed beliefs, so long as they do no harm.” (Nussbaum 2004b, p. 44) Thus Nussbaum’s approach makes ample room for exclusivist religious perspectives while upholding universal religious liberty for all.

7. Martha Nussbaum: Analysis

Nussbaum’s Liberty of Conscience highlights and draws from the seminal work of Roger Williams, the seventeenth-century founder of Rhode Island and erstwhile Baptist.113 Nussbaum explains, “My use of Roger Williams in this book is motivated, in part, by the feeling that ideas of great importance do in fact emerge from a confrontation with his writings.”114 Williams taught that all humans are endowed with conscience, whether “Jewes, Turkes, Papists, Protestants, Pagans, etc.”115 The opening pages of his The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience declared, “It is the will of and command of God that (since the coming of his Sonne the Lord Jesus) a permission of the most paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or antichristian consciences and worships, bee granted to all men in all Nations and Countries.”116

Williams epitomized “a mutually respectful civil peace among people who differ in conscientious commitment.”117 According to Nussbaum, Williams developed “an independent ethical argument for his political principles.”118 He supported not only liberty of “belief,” but also freedom of “worship” and “practice.”119 He himself was not ambivalent concerning his personal views of religious belief and practice.120 Rather, he wrote “as an intensely religious person.”121 From his own perspective, he could argue for the instrumental importance of religious liberty: “If you force someone, it hardens their opposition, thus preventing their voluntary conversion, hence their salvation.”122 Yet he also believed in the intrinsic good of “the precious faculty of conscience” and its freedom.123 According to Williams, liberty of conscience is a “most precious and invaluable Jewel.”124 While Williams espoused his own Christian views, he labored “to develop an independent ethical argument for his political principles, based on the dignity and vulnerability of conscience, the equal worth of all consciences, and the needs of consciences for ample space.”125

Nussbaum believes that Williams understood this final premise better than the philosopher John Locke did.126 Locke believed that equal liberty was compatible with a religious establishment, but Williams demurred.127 Williams espoused an “accommodationist” position regarding the beliefs of minorities, and his writings (unlike Locke’s) extended this accommodation to Jews and Muslims, as well as agnostics and atheists.128 Williams viewed religious freedom and liberty of conscience as founded in a fundamental human right rather than in the granting of tolerance. “Here we see the real difference between the accommodationist and the Lockean: the former asserts as a basic right what the latter understands as a privilege that must be negotiated through the political process.”129 Nussbaum also contends that Williams had keener psychological insights than Locke into the human person.130 She maintains that Williams was “a subtle psychologist of injustice.”131 For these “significant and revealing differences,” Nussbaum prefers Williams’s approach to Locke’s.132

Nussbaum’s model of a global ethic of religious liberty founded upon a shared capacity (conscience), rather than upon shared content (similarity of ethical and related religious beliefs), a shared telos (similar moral transformation of adherents), or upon a shared destiny (religions leading to the same Ultimate Reality), can easily interface with particularist religious views, including Christian exclusivism (the insistence that personal faith in Jesus Christ alone is the way to God). Following the specific example of the pioneering Roger Williams, such a model could mesh with a Christian particularism.

8. Conclusions

Hans Küng, even in his early work, argued from an inclusivist understanding of religion that claimed that all religions are reflections of truth. His later works developed his Christology more fully yet retained his inclusivist approach, even while distancing his perspectives from a full “religious pluralism” that claimed all religions are equally valid. As a Roman Catholic priest and as a theologian, he insisted that the fullness of the truth objectively resided in Jesus Christ. Yet he built his model of a “Global Ethic” upon the shared content of ethical beliefs across the religious traditions, upon the shared telos of the moral transformation of all adherents, and upon the shared destiny of all religious paths. Furthermore, Küng held that sincere non-Christians could be oriented toward God through Christ, although unconsciously so. One wonders if, ironically, his views could be construed as an implicit soft coercion, in which non-Christians are constructed as Christians without their conscious knowledge, volition, or consent.

Alternatively, Martha Nussbaum proposes an alternative framework that does not argue from a shared overlap of ethical and related religious beliefs, a shared overlap of moral transformation, or a shared overlap of ultimate destiny, but from a shared possession of a universal faculty or capacity—that of human conscience.133 Her work especially borrows insights from Roger Williams, the erstwhile Baptist (and later Christian “Seeker”) and founder of Providence Plantations (which subsequently became the state of Rhode Island).134 Nussbaum explains, “And although truth is important in Williams’s universe, truth is not the basis of respect. What he reveres is the faculty for finding truth, the capacity for searching and choosing.”135 In this framework, religious adherents do not necessarily have to agree on shared religious or ethical beliefs or agree that they share the same destiny, but they must still respect the equal dignity of human persons and a uniform liberty of conscience.136

If it is assumed or implied that “exclusivist” religious adherents are simply unable to espouse a form of universal religious liberty, one shuts down meaningful dialog aimed at mutual understanding.137 The commonality of human faculties and human dignity, therefore, may be one possible avenue leading to productive dialog, in the attempt not to alienate more strict or “traditionalist” religious adherents from the conversation table of public policy.138 Consequently, it is not necessarily the case that one must espouse an “inclusivist” religious perspective in order to support and defend religious liberty as a universal right.139 One can consistently espouse an “exclusivist” perspective on a theological level while advocating for religious liberty on a public policy level, through an understanding of the nature, role, and importance of the human faculty of conscience.140

For instance, long before the Second Vatican Council’s Dignitas humanae, seventeenth-century Baptists (among others) argued that religious coercion led to “dissimulation” (hypocrisy) and insisted that religious liberty (not just “toleration”) can and should be held in tandem with particularist religious views. More specifically, they believed that God is approached through Jesus Christ alone (who is the only “Lord of the conscience”) and that his will is singularly known through the Christian Scriptures.141 They agreed with Roger Williams when he insisted, “God’s people ever maintained Christ Jesus the only Lord and King to the conscience.” And again, “That Christ is King alone over conscience is the sum of all true preaching.”142

Early Baptists supported both theological exclusivism and universal religious liberty (Feldman 2002, pp. 367–68, 386–90). They did not believe that a multiplicity of roads lead to God (D. Porter 1971, pp. 24–32). Rather, Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and humanity, and there is no other name under heaven by which salvation comes. Only Jesus as God incarnate is the way, the truth, and the life.143 Nevertheless, they also insisted that one should not place fellow travelers involuntarily upon this singular road, whether directly and forcibly (through religious persecution) or indirectly and implicitly (through the theological construction of religious adherents who deliberately reject Christ yet are unintentionally destined for eternal, divine fellowship through him).144

Based upon this exclusivism (and not in spite of it) the early Baptists contended that everyone (and not just Christians) should enjoy full freedom of conscience.145 Consciences should not be coerced by any human (including governmental) authority, which would only lead to “dissimulation” (or hypocrisy). As a result, the early Baptists robustly supported freedom of religion as an essential public policy, yet one grounded in “the cardinal principle of the absolute Lordship of Christ.” (Truett 1998, p. 68).

In sum, the models espoused by Hans Küng (an ecumenical theologian) and highlighted by Martha Nussbaum (a Reform Jewish intellectual) both lend support to public policies that espouse religious liberty for all.146 Nevertheless, the former encouraged an “inclusive” perspective stripped of the particularities of a distinctive theology.147 But the “capability approach” of the latter can effectively coalesce with support for religious liberty while concurrently emphasizing an “exclusivist” understanding arising from a particularist religious stance.148 In this manner, upholding a public policy of religious liberty based upon a shared faculty (human conscience) rather than upon shared content (similarity of ethical and related religious beliefs), a shared telos (similarity of moral transformation), or a shared destiny (with variant religious paths similarly leading to the same Ultimate Reality) is fundamentally able to interface with a particularism that insists upon the singular role of Jesus Christ as the only “Lord of the conscience.”149