Challenging the Liberal State: Religious Actors within the Debate on Bio-Politics

In the social sciences, interest in “religion” as a determining socio-political force had been negligible till the 1990s. However, religion experienced a renaissance even though many theories of modernization proclaimed the end or at least the decline of religion. Democracy theory had neglected religion for a long time, too, or in fact had seen religion as a problem for democratic processes: Politics and religion should ideally be separated from each other. Religion is at its best where it is as little political as possible and politics out to be as far as possible free from religious influence. However, empirical evidence has pointed to the importance of religion in politics and some normative approaches nowadays regard religious arguments and religious actors as a new potential to enrich democratic discourse. Furthermore, religious groups can draw upon an extensive service-infrastructure, the ability to reach and talk to people and have had much experience in addressing social and moral issues. But the legitimacy and the functionality of such religious interventions in the “secular” state are both politically and theoretically not uncontroversial (see for example R. Dworkin, J. Rawls, J. Habermas). Do we really have a reason for optimism regarding religious arguments and religious actors in democratic discourses? These questions are reproduced in societal discourses about morally ambiguous issues. One of them is bio-politics. Bio-politics are nationally and internationally important and there is profound moral-ethical disagreement about whether such technologies should be allowed or forbidden. Among the social groups that strongly shape the character of these debates are many religious organizations and actors. We will present four case studies (Germany, USA, Italy, and Norway) in the field of bio-politics studying the political regulation of stem cell research, cloning and pre-implantation genetic diagnostic since the 1980s. It is of specific interest in what ways religious traditions and organisations formulate their bio-ethical positions, which kinds of reasons they give to validate their positions within the political process and they influence politics (e.g. in which ways and under what conditions do religious positions and arguments achieve influence political decisions?). Based on the case studies we argue that religion seems to be a double-edged sword which can be used equally either to endorse conflict and exclusion or to promote inclusion within the discursive process. Moreover it seems as if there is a conflict over bio-politics, it is at least as often a conflict within religious denominations (as religious people are divided on the issues) than between religion and politics. Concerning the arguments used, it is a misperception that religious positions are simple, one-dimensional, dogmatic, or based solely on claims of special knowledge. Most (if not all) communities build their religious arguments on scientific knowledge and ethical positions.