6

Deep Freedom

The Politics of the Religion of the Future

Po liti cal theology without God

No institutional form of the life of a people— that is to say, no law— can
be neutral among social ideals or visions of the good. Every such order
encourages some forms of experience and discourages others. Th e
claim of neutrality in favor of a par tic u lar set of arrangements will al-
ways be found in retrospect to serve the entrenchment of a provincial
and exclusive ideal and to inhibit our movement toward a greater life.
Moreover, the false goal of neutrality helps prevent us from advancing
in the realization of twin feasible goals: that the regime be open to a
broad range of experiments in individual and social life and that, above
all, it be maximally susceptible to correction in the light of experience.
Social ideals and visions of the good are inseparably connected with
a view of who we are. Our fundamental ideas about ourselves and about
our situation in the world share some of the characteristics of religion:
they are at once descriptive and prescriptive. Th ey form part of the pro-
cess by which we come to commit our lives in a par tic u lar direction
without ever having, for such a commitment, adequate grounds. One
reason why politics is ultimately religious in its reach is that positions
taken in the contest over our institutions and practices turn, ultimately
or in part, on our ideas about ourselves.
It does not follow from the non- neutrality of a regime of social life
with respect to conceptions of the good, and thus as well with regard to
views of who we are, that a regime should or must be uniquely associ-