Een van de oorzaken van mijn periode van afwezigheid was mijn deelname aan een intensief studieprogramma in Ankara en het werk daarna aan een essay. Van het essay moesten we een samenvatting maken in de vorm van een column. Ik dacht: waarom zou ik die niet 's op mijn blog publiceren? Bij deze.
Is the Dutch Reformed Protestant Party SGP non-democratic?
Does the Dutch
Reformed Protestant political party SGP exceed the bounds of separation between
church and state when its representatives attempt to realize religious
ends using generally accepted or mere religious arguments in the parliamentary
debate and to be more precise by trying to realize religious ends as such?
In his The Idea of Public Reason Revisited John Rawls discusses this problem
where he calls the ‘bounds’ the ‘proviso’,
and in his terms religious ends can be based largely on ‘sources of not only
religious but also secular non-political motives’ which he calls ‘comprehensive
doctrines’ so let’s see if Rawls can cast light on the matter.
The SGP
reasons that neutral debating doesn’t exist. One cannot enter into the public
sphere without bringing along one’s belief and the conceptions based on it. Conversely
Rawls is very keen on repulsing comprehensive doctrines from the public
political forum.
Using the
term ‘public sphere’ the SGP refers to the Dutch historically developed
practice of negotiation, formally between church and state and contemporarily
between religions, secular philosophies and the state. When a Dutch citizen
appeals on the separation between church and state then he doesn’t refer to an
accomplished legal fact but to good practice.
In the USA,
where Rawls was writing, Jefferson’s ideal of a ‘wall of separation between
church and state’ is supplemented over the years by jurisprudence on the
subject. As if meant allegorically Rawls writes about an ‘ideal of public
reason’. The public political forum has to be sterile from any expression of
whatever doctrine.
Officially
in the Netherlands comprehensive doctrines exclusively reach the legislative
power because citizens – different from the USA – cannot vote for candidates
for the other two powers. This seems easier to oversee but that is not the case
due to party politics. Citizens choose candidates for Parliament who are listed
as members of political parties and once they are chosen they represent their
voters as members of that political party, having its own doctrines expressing
its ideology, so comprehensive doctrines are present in the composition of the
parliament itself.
On the contrary
Rawls calls all three political powers the ‘public political forum’ distinguishing
it from public sphere. Within the limiting values ‘equality and freedom of all
citizens and deliberative reciprocity’ the proviso can permeate deeply into the
parliamentary debate but of course has to be respected in the end. Legislation
itself has to be performed in terms of public reason. However, thus a wide
range is provided for (adherers of) comprehensive doctrines. Due to the fact
that citizens give insight in each other’s comprehensive doctrines in deliberation
as well as how these doctrines endorse ‘constitutional essentials and matters
of basic justice’ these citizens can – in spite of their opposing comprehensive
doctrines yet ‘exercise ultimate political power as a collective body’.
In the
Netherlands the principle of separation between church and state actually
refers to an accomplished fact of institutional separation. There are no bounds of legal separation between
church and state which can be exceeded. Well, the SGP does strive for realization
of religious ends using religious and common arguments but they are doing so in
the traditional political practice of the Netherlands. So in the end the SGP does in Rome as the Romans do.
There is
one fly in the ointment though. The SGP does violate a principle if you define
democracy the way Rawls does: ‘the execution of ultimate political power by the
people as a collective body’. The SGP on the contrary states that ‘ultimate
power does not emanate from the people but from God’. If the SGP means this
literally then, in the light of Rawls’ idea of public reason, it disqualifies
itself as a democratic party.
Geïnteresseerd in het hele essay?
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