Religion, Bioethics, and Public Policy

This chapter starts by analyzing and evaluating two stories about the role of religion in the origin and development of bioethics and about the secularization of bioethics. Both stories employ different conceptions of religion, and neglect the range and diversity of bioethics in the United States. Both stories, inaccurate and inadequate in different ways, claim that religion has only a limited place in contemporary bioethics in part as a result of allegedly excessive attention to public bioethics and to principles-based reasoning in that context. The chapter then critically examines a prominent and sometimes illuminating but ultimately flawed sociological interpretation of the secularization of public bioethics. Much of the controversy featured in this chapter hinges on claims about whether the prominent role of principles-based reasoning in bioethics, especially in public bioethics, has contributed to and/or reflected a process of secularization.