Abstract
This paper tries to frame the question of how religion, justice and development relate to one another in contrast to two dominant secular frameworks, which treat justice and development as separate from the topic of religion. Rawls and Sen do engage the topic of religion; but in their frameworks religion is presented as a type of metaphysical dogmatism, which may determine how much or how little a society develops based on industrial growth, equal political opportunities for positions of leadership in a true democracy, and the ability of citizens to choose which aspects of culture or tradition that they want to maintain or abandon. For the most part, both are critical of religion if it takes on the form of an authoritarian dogma in which people are not free to choose between the tradeoffs of economic growth and cultural preservation. By using a passage in Rousseau, I open up certain paradoxes about the relationship between religion, justice and development. I then proceed to deconstruct the basic assumptions of Rawls and Sen while comparing and contrasting their works on justice and development. In my analysis, I diagnose a failure in both thinkers to integrate religion into their overall frameworks of analysis, which then delimits how we truly understand the causes, processes and potential ends of development. I then conclude with a series of reflections and recommendations for a wider definition of development, which in fact takes seriously the binding force that religion has on issues of justice and development while pointing to future avenues of research. Indeed, in the freedom-oriented perspective the liberty to all to participate in deciding what traditions to observe cannot be ruled out by the national or local "guardians"-neither by the ayatollahs (or other religious authorities), nor by political rulers (or governmental dictators), nor by the "cultural experts" (domestic and foreign). The pointer to any real conflict between the preservation of tradition and the advantages of modernity calls for a participatory resolution, not for a unilateral rejection of modernity in favor of tradition by political rulers, religious authorities, or anthropological admirers of the legacy of the past...Any attempt to choke off participatory freedom on grounds of traditional values (such as religious fundamentalism, or political custom, or the so-called Asian values) simply misses the issue of legitimacy and the need for the people affected to participate in deciding what they want and what they have reason to accept. Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (1999) I believe that the causes of the wealth of a people and the forms it takes lie in their political culture and in the religious, philosophical and moral traditions that support the basic structure of their political and social institutions as well as the industriousness and cooperative talents of its members, all supported by their political virtues. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (1999) Discovering the rules of society best suited for nations would require a superior intelligence that beheld all passions of men without feeling any of them; who had no affinity with our nation, yet knew it through and through; whose happiness was independent of us, yet who nevertheless was willing to concern itself with ours; finally, who, in the passage of time, procures for himself a distant glory, being able to labor in one's age and find enjoyment in another. Gods would be needed to give men laws.