Three Concepts of Church Autonomy

In their thought-provoking papers, Professor Marci Hamilton opposes church autonomy1 and Professor Brett Scharffs supports it.2 But it is not clear that what Professor Hamilton rejects is precisely what Professor Scharffs endorses. In fact, it is by no means easy to settle on an idea of church for purpose of sorting out whether it is a good idea or a bad one. To clarify lines of agreement and disagreement about church I think it useful to work with what I will call the composite idea of church The elements of that composite I shall describe as concepts of church autonomy: formal, normative, and doctrinal. Conceived formally, church is a certain set of jural relations between faith communities and other rival interests such as disaffected individual members, outsiders, or government. Conceived normatively, church is a proposal about how worth or good of justifies such formal jural relations. Conceived doctrinally, church proposes a standard of review that specifies content of formal jural relations by setting out an order of priority between, or a rule for adjusting, worth or good of and other goods or principles when these are rival. It should be clear that each of component concepts can be worked out in a range of proposals. The content of what I shall call a of church autonomy is given by content of these proposals. Thus there exists a domain of conceptions of church autonomy, such that each conception in domain answers three questions. What are jurai relations of church autonomy? On what understanding of meaning and worth of are such relations justified? How are jural relations to be worked out when there are conflicting exercises or expressions of or when worth of is pitted against other goods? Answers to these questions are proposals about formal, normative, and doctrinal concepts of church autonomy. Such questions identify points where understandings diverge. We might agree on a formal description of jural relations between faith communities and other interests but disagree about whether such relations are desirable. We might agree that they are desirable but disagree about whether moral worth of is what makes them desirable (or we might embrace quite different understandings of moral worth of autonomy). And even if we share a common description of jural relations of church and a common autonomy-based justification for these relations, we might support different outcomes in cases if we hold different estimates of worth of in relation to other goods at stake. Now, Professor Scharffs offers a of church autonomy in sense defined above. The heart of his conception is a proposal about normative a proposal he calls interindependence.3 This proposal, offered as a philosophical anthropology or interpretation of structure of personality and sociality in relation to one another, governs Professor Scharffs's presentation of jural relations and doctrinal forms of church autonomy. By contrast, Professor Hamilton's arguments against church are not addressed to any particular conception of church autonomy. Instead, her thesis is strong one that there can be no acceptable conception of church autonomy. Her thesis is strong because it rules out all proposals about formal jural church autonomy-regardless of content of those proposals, and regardless of whether moral backing for them is sought in worth of or in some other idea. At end of day, however, I conclude that Professor Hamilton's arguments do not make out a convincing case that formal jurai relations of church are per se undesirable. Moreover, I find much to like in Professor Scharffs's philosophical anthropology, ground of his normative concept of church autonomy. …