Who Knows Best? Religious Expertise in Making Decisions about Religion

Abstract When it comes to making political decisions about religion, decision-makers often rely on the testimonies of two kinds of religious experts: religious leaders and academic experts of religion. While such religious experts have epistemic authority for questions of religious identification and religious orthodoxy, their expertise is the wrong kind in a religiously neutral state. Questions of religious identification unfairly treat religion as being uniquely special and questions of religious orthodoxy give priority to religious traditions over individuals. Instead, only the subjective importance of commitments matters for cases of religious freedom, and only the objective interpretation of religious establishment matters in cases of religious establishment. Religious experts having no epistemic advantage here, they should not be playing any special role in making decisions about religion.