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

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.