A NEW report by Theos responds to accusations that opponents of assisted dying are not honest about their religious motivations.
“How much have your religious views influenced your decision?”: Religion and the assisted dying debate, by Nick Spencer, Senior Fellow at Theos, was due to be published yesterday; the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill returns to the House of Commons to continue its remaining stages on Friday.
The report refers to advocates for assisted dying, such as Dame Esther Rantzen, who have said that, in a supposedly secular country, assisted dying should not be opposed on the basis of religious belief — or, if it is, those beliefs should be declared (Leader comment, 23 May).
“In effect, assisted dying serves as a case study for the wider question of what role religion should play in a diverse, liberal and increasingly contested public square like our own,” the report says.
It tackles objections to “religious public reasoning”: for example, that it is “intellectually inadequate”; that it seeks to “impose” its views on others; or that religious believers, “by using publicly-accessible language . . . are not being open about their true motivations”.
In response to the latter objection, the report says: “The idea that one kind of belief system — the religious one — should be named, outed and treated like it was a compromising factor, but that other (non-religious) belief systems need not do so . . . is based on the conviction that some belief systems (essentially contemporary liberal secularist ones) are normal, obvious, uncontroversial, rational, and straightforwardly compatible with ‘conscience debates’, whereas others are not. This conviction is historically, sociologically and philosophically unsustainable, but it has not stopped it from gaining credence and informing arguments. . .
“Claiming that your opponents are fundamentally lying for covert (religious) reasons is not an appealing way of conducting public debate.”
The report also argues that it is “extremely odd” to accuse religious figures of “imposing” their views on others, “when they are exercising precisely the same rights of speech, association, campaigning, and voting as everyone else. And it seems even stranger to accuse elected parliamentarians of doing so.”
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