What is it about?

This article asks "What is the Christian Imperative in the public sphere?" To answer this question, a case study of faith-based organizations (FBOs) preventing euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS) for people who deem their lives completed through the Completed Life Bill in the Netherlands is presented. The case study helps to concretize liberalism's constraints on religious reasoning in debates on public bioethics. It argues that public reason liberalism falls short in allowing Christians, and other minorities for that matter, to fully participate representing their beliefs in the political life of a genuinely pluralist state. The conscientious-engagement model from the Reformational tradition is explored as an alternative; and the anthropological notion of embodiment, rather than autonomy, is presented as a basis for a more impartial bioethical policy.

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Why is it important?

This paper provides an alternative to Rawlsian public reason liberalism and the constraints it imposes on religious reasoning in debates on public bioethics: the conscientious engagement model from the Reformational tradition. It also provides an alternative to the concept of autonomy: Carter Snead’s anthropological notion of embodiment, as the core of a more impartial bioethics legislation.

Perspectives

Writing this article was a great pleasure as it has a co-author with whom I have had a long standing friendship. But it is only now that we finally collaborated. This collaboration was born out not only from our friendship but the conviction that the Completed Life Bill, if passed, will lead to a fundamental change in the law and the practice of euthanasia.

Liza Lansang-Espinoza
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

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This page is a summary of: Public and Faithful: On the Liberal State and Ethics of Citizenship, Philosophia Reformata, April 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/23528230-bja10104.
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