Should religious ethics play a role in formulating and justifying public policy in bioethics? The recent furor over human cloning, precipitated by the February 1997 announcement of the birth of Dolly the sheep, provides a revealing venue for examining some possible approaches to this question. When the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC) held presidentially mandated public deliberations about federal policy on human cloning, it considered a variety of religious perspectives on cloning research and on the prospects of cloning humans. That move has since received substantial criticism, particularly from bioethicists who have found it philosophically and politically problematic to give such a public profile and legitimation to religious voices. The roles of religious commentary in the NBAC deliberations, including some of the criticisms made against an inclusive public policy discourse, reveal the problematic status of religious arguments in bioethics and politics. Reviving a democratic distinction between influence and authority can enable society and policy makers to understand religion not as a problem in public bioethics discourse but as a constructive resource.

RELIGION AS SOCIAL "PROBLEM"
In the wake of reports about Dolly's birth, some scientists and social commentators believed that the prospects of cloning a human being had moved from science fiction to scientific possibility and would evolve very shortly to scientific reality.¹ As these events unfolded in February and March 1997, the U.S. government found itself with few policy guidelines to regulate or restrict human cloning research. Thus President Clinton imposed a moratorium on the use of federal funds for such research and asked NBAC, which is authorized to examine a variety of issues in medical research, to review the legal and ethical issues associated with cloning technology and to develop recommendations for public policy within ninety days.² In announcing these steps, the president stated that "any discovery that touches upon human creation is not simply a matter of scientific inquiry, it is a matter of morality and spirituality as well."³

The full story of the process by which NBAC carried out this presidential mandate--including the rationale of NBAC for inviting religious perspectives into the policy discussion--has yet to be compiled. Nonetheless, I can offer a few observations on this process based on my conversations with NBAC commissioners, attendance at NBAC's public hearings, and preparation of a lengthy interpretative paper on religion and human cloning for NBAC.⁴ The first observation is that NBAC's decision to include religious voices was not uncontroversial, both among some members of NBAC and in the political context within which NBAC functions. Opponents of religious inclusion felt that religious perspectives are invariably hostile to scientific developments; this antagonism, it was claimed, intensifies when questions of creating human life or facilitating death are at issue.

This argument against inclusion relies on an interpretation of religion as a "problem" rather than as a contributor to public policy. These theoretical objections had been experienced first hand by some NBAC commissioners who had served on other federal panels addressing biomedical research in the past decade; these included NIH (spell out) panels addressing controversies over the ethics of research on fetal tissue (1988) and on unimplanted human embryos (1994). In earlier panels, concerns had arisen that the religious views expressed invariably seemed hostile to scientific research in general, and were not conversant with contemporary science. The NBAC commissioners worried that a public presence by religious traditions on the cloning issue would invite the kind of unyielding dogmatism that had greatly hindered the deliberations of these predecessor panels.

These are serious reservations and they suggest some criteria that religious traditions should be prepared to meet in engaging the realm of public policy in bioethics. First, a religious position should be scientifically sensitive. It should be informed and literate about the scientific research under consideration, whether it be human cloning or, more recently, embryonic stem cell research. A lack of scientific sensitivity inevitably undermines the credibility of a religious-based interpretation. In addition, religious positions should be scientifically specific, tailored as much as possible to the specific scientific proposal and its religious ramifications. A theological claim that, based on its approach to other issues in biomedical technology, is predictably prophetic in its denunciation (or priestly in its blessing) of science will not do justice either to the specific public policy question or to its own religious tradition.

In addition to the issues posed for NBAC commissioners, congressional representatives with oversight responsibilities for science and biotechnology expressed concerns about the adequacy of religious thought on at least two central issues of pluralism. First, some politicians questioned the extent to which any single interpretation of cloning could possibly encompass the breadth of ethical positions and theological nuances internal to each religious tradition. Hence, religious scholars invited by NBAC to make a presentation were not to be understood as a "representative" of a tradition, but a citizen-scholar with religious convictions. Second, congressional and scientific policy makers were skeptical as to whether a religiously based view of human cloning could be rendered accessible to an audience external to a tradition, including the wide audience of diverse citizens for whom NBAC was making policy.

These reservations suggest that, in addition to sensitivity and specificity, a third and fourth criteria are necessary for religious discourse to have relevance in the policy realm. A position needs to be a faithful interpretation of, and display integrity to, its tradition of religious thought and yet be sufficiently accessible to persons outside the specific tradition to provide meaningful dialogue. This is not an easy balance to strike, and I have referred elsewhere to these criteria as constituting the problem of "translation" for contemporary religious ethics.⁵ Indeed, some bioethicists contend the balance cannot be successfully achieved; the conclusion frequently drawn from this perspective is that religious voices should be circumscribed to the confines of their particular religious community.⁶ Such a view, however, presumes that values between various religious traditions, let alone between religious and secular perspectives, are so radically incommensurable as to make substantive dialogue virtually impossible. While I cannot engage this debate fully here, I believe that the presentations made by theologians before NBAC⁷ provide superb examples of attempts to achieve a balance between integrity to one's faith tradition and accessibility to the public.

Thus, criteria of sensitivity, specificity, integrity, and accessibility are important in making a cogent case for the public value of religious claims in bioethics. It is unclear what factors overcame the initial skepticism of scientists and biotech advocates, some NBAC commissioners, congressional leaders, and policymakers toward including religious perspectives on human cloning in the NBAC deliberations. Writing retrospectively, NBAC commissioner James F. Childress has offered several reasons for inclusion:

1. Many citizens, that is to say, a good number of the "public," rely on the moral views of religious communities in adopting stances toward biotechnological innovations;

2. Some moral arguments offered by religious traditions appeal to commonly shared values;

3. Despite pronounced religious pluralism in American culture, it may be possible for religious traditions to reach a consensus on human cloning;

4. The "serious national moral discourse" NBAC sought to initiate about human cloning necessarily requires participation by religious traditions;

5. The feasibility of a public policy is in part shaped by "the nature, extent, and depth of opposition" to the policy by religious and other communities.⁸

Undoubtedly, many of these reasons were only inchoately formulated or articulated among the commissioners when NBAC began its deliberations. Based on my conversations with some of the commissioners, concerns about vigorous religious opposition to human cloning (rationale five above) were widespread. For these members, the legacy of religion as a "problem" rather than a constructive contributor to policy forums seemed to be a working presupposition. This makes it all the more striking that religious discussion of cloning before NBAC came very early in the deliberative process rather than as an afterthought or appendix.

ANTICIPATORY BIOETHICS
In its initial public meeting in March 1997, NBAC commissioners listened to a presentation on the scientific method of somatic cell nuclear transfer, the breakthrough process by which Dolly had been cloned, as well as the prospects for applying this method to human beings. The scientists informed NBAC that, with a few research refinements, somatic cell nuclear transfer in human beings was indeed a scientific possibility. Put another way, based on this evidence, NBAC could be reassured it was not devoting its time and resources to fiction or fantasy. Thus, it became imperative for NBAC to engage in "anticipatory" bioethics by considering the legal, ethical, and religious issues in advance of clinical application rather than the more common practice of "re-active" bioethics in which moral reflection is dictated by scientific immediacy and futilely races to catch up.

NBAC then turned to a series of invited presentations of religious perspectives on human cloning, as articulated by leading scholars in bioethics who drew on theological themes from Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and Islam. Three presentations from secular bioethicists concluded the initial set of public hearings. While it is possible to overinterpret the sequence of these presentations (a sequence, it should be mentioned, that was subsequently repeated when NBAC issued its report, Cloning Human Beings), it is significant that theologians and religious scholars made the first substantive presentations on the ethical and social implications of human cloning. Why, when some in the scientific, biotech, and policy communities were advocating that religious ideas not be included at all in NBAC's deliberations, did the religious discussion come first? Two reasons present themselves, and they offer important lessons about the policy image of religious bioethics.

First, theologians have seriously engaged the issues surrounding human cloning almost from the outset of contemporary bioethics. This discussion emerged in the mid-1960s in the context of scientific studies of cloned frogs, expanded use of reproductive technologies (such as the birth control pill), and general societal concern about prospective overpopulation. During this era, Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg proposed human cloning as a way to save what he believed to be the genetically endangered species of human beings. Lederberg, as well as other scientists, was concerned that medical and social advances had put the species at risk of genetic extinction due to a cumulative transmission of "inferior" genes among the population. Cloning humans with preferred genotypes was one scientific solution, he suggested, to save humanity from its perilous condition.

While Lederberg's proposal reflected a scientific vision based on not then-current scientific techniques, this vision clearly held implications for basic religious understandings about the character of human nature and human destiny. Thus, the prospect of human cloning sparked a vigorous discussion among leading theological scholars in biomedical ethics, among them Episcopal priest Joseph Fletcher, neo-orthodox theologian Paul Ramsey, and Roman Catholic moral theologian Richard McCormick. Fletcher and Ramsey articulated diametrically opposed positions that, in retrospect, are remarkably prescient given the current controversy over cloning. The views of Fletcher and Ramsey (as well as McCormick, who sided with Ramsey) anticipated not only the possible uses of cloning, as well as the potential for abuses, but also the major lines of argumentation in bioethics.

Thus, NBAC could turn to theological sources and immediately find a rich legacy of substantive ethical discussion on human cloning. NBAC could find in someone like Joseph Fletcher a theological mirror for contemporary advocates of human freedom, control of reproductive choice, and procreative autonomy.⁹ In the critique of cloning offered by Paul Ramsey, NBAC could discover a sustained discussion of the human values that could be violated by cloning, including issues of nontherapeutic experimentation, the meaning of the family and parenting, and the dignity of the human person.¹⁰ In short, the theological discussion about cloning that had occurred (and expanded into other religious traditions) since the 1960s provided one valuable resource required for anticipatory bioethics.

The same could not be said for philosophical and secular bioethics. Some philosophical writing on human cloning had been prompted by a 1993 experiment at George Washington University involving cloned genetically malformed blastocysts, but by and large, philosophical discussion was both scarce and reactive. Moreover, as one commissioner commented to me, philosophical analysis of cloning was "predictably superficial." That is, such analysis invariably presumed that the ethics of human cloning were sufficiently circumscribed by a presumption in favor of reproductive autonomy. However, it should be noted that, unlike Fletcher's advocacy of autonomy a quarter century earlier, current philosophical ethics has uncoupled autonomy from any larger vision of societal good or human ends, so that it offers a very thin and truncated understanding of moral decision making.

In addition to religion's history of grappling with the ethics of cloning, the second possible reason for NBAC's inclusion of religion is, then, the inadequacy of secular bioethics. The philosophical ideal of autonomy as an end unto itself should, in the thin framework of secular ethics, furnish a sufficient justification for human cloning. Yet a moral anomaly emerged in the cloning discussion: the resistance of many citizens toward the prospect of human cloning. Philosophical analysis on autonomy may provide coherent, rational arguments for cloning, but it was unable to account for the anger, fear, or revulsion that the story of Dolly elicited. These sentiments might be attributed to scientific illiteracy of the public, but a federal panel constituted on behalf of citizens cannot afford to be so dismissive of public perspectives. On the contrary, the NBAC commissioner speculated the resistance to cloning presupposed a richer and more complex texture of human values held by the public than an ethic of autonomy could offer, a texture that theological interpretations seemed to interpret with greater attentiveness and insight.

SHIFTING THE BURDEN OF BENEFIT
Although I have constructed a rationale for the intellectual primacy of place given to religious thought in NBAC's deliberations, it is unclear whether religious attentiveness and secular inadequacy was a significant factor in the presentation sequence. Nonetheless, this structure did allow religious questions to have a prominence in the discussion that they otherwise would not have had. In particular, religious themes assumed a framing function for NBAC. That is, religious perspectives on the nature of parenting and procreation, the meaning of children, scientific progress, and the impact of technology on human self-understanding framed subsequent philosophical and political discussion that sought to interpret the significance of cloning merely as a matter of technical achievement, economic valuation, or secular ethical principle. By getting "first shot," as it were, at the cloning controversy, these religious perspectives had to be engaged at some level; religious themes became part of the embedded policy discourse on cloning with which other, nonreligious perspectives, either explicitly or implicitly, had to concur, revise, or refute. What could not happen, at least if the development of public policy by NBAC were to be perceived as responsible and credible, was a rather superficial dismissal of religious claims.

An alternative organizational sequence might have given primacy of place to arguments from autonomy, including freedom of scientific inquiry and procreative autonomy. That approach would have situated the ethical and legal discussion of cloning within a strong cultural presumption in favor of freedom of choice and would have required other respondents, including those making appeals to religious claims, to first provide a compelling case to rebut the presumption in favor of autonomy before explicating their own perspective. In our political culture, that is a very difficult case to make, because it requires a showing of immediate and demonstrable harms as a basis for restrictions on liberty in advance of applying the technology.

The presentation of religious perspectives before NBAC helped accomplish a subtle shift in the burden of proof, a discursive emphasis on prospective benefits rather than speculative harms: advocates of proceeding with research on human cloning now found themselves compelled to make a case for the benefits of the procedure rather than merely fending off objections via the trump card of autonomy. This was particularly necessary because NBAC had been convened to consider whether federal money should be used to support cloning. Given this context, advocates of cloning research needed to justify not only "negative rights" of noninterference (against government and religion, for instance) but also "positive rights" to assistance in achieving their ends.

Here again, the ethic of autonomy proved of limited value. While an argument from autonomy might secure rights against others to refrain from intervention with personal liberty, this would mean only that the exercise of the right to reproduce through cloning not be inhibited. The argument is insufficient, however, to warrant a claim for (financial, technical, logistical) assistance from the public sector. Such assistance requires a showing not simply that the procedure will not cause harm, but that it will also provide benefits that can be publicly supported and justified. Such an argument does not entail assistance with "no strings attached" either: a validated claim for assistance would entail not only federal financial support of the research, but also oversight and regulation, about which there is some ambivalence, and perhaps division, between the interests of the scientific community and those of the biotech industry.

At least in NBAC's public deliberations, philosophical presentations did not make a case for significant societal benefit from human cloning. NBAC commissioners did acknowledge that human cloning could bring important personal or familial benefits in rare and compelling circumstances, but these "hard cases" where cloning may be acceptable (infertility, death of a spouse, death of a child) were not deemed grounds for a clinical practice of human cloning or decisive for public policy. By contrast, members of the biotech industry did articulate a compelling case for societal benefits from animal cloning and research on human embryos but stopped short of presenting cloning as a therapeutic remedy for infertility. The social benefits argument turns primarily on anticipation of basic knowledge gained about early human development and the onset of disease mechanisms as well as applications in developing biopharmacological products and regenerative cells and tissues. Cloning research in biomedicine promises societal benefits, but the achievement of these benefits does not require reproduction through cloning a human being.

It would be an oversimplification to claim that the religious argumentation by itself shifted the burden of proof from harms to benefits. The degree of scientific uncertainty about the safety and efficacy of a cloning procedure in human beings provided the primary warrant for such a shift. Nonetheless, religious themes about human nature, responsible stewardship, human dignity, and theologies of the family provided a supporting or buttressing rationale for the shift.

RELIGION AS EMBODIED PLURALISM
As with its predecessor bioethics commissions, NBAC struggled with the question of moral pluralism, of formulating policy for all the public, given the diversity of smaller, intermediate communities (for example, health care institutions, religions, professional associations, families) that are oriented by different and sometimes conflicting value commitments. NBAC ultimately recommended a procedural approach to moral pluralism, encouraging widespread education and deliberation: as articulated by NBAC chair, Harold Shapiro, a procedural ethic was required on the grounds that "there is no universally accepted moral theory; Americans hold various religious and moral perspectives on these issues; conflicting values are at stake; Americans differ on the importance and meaning of particular traditions; tolerance (agreeing to disagree) governs wide areas of our national life." Shapiro concluded that a formative value in the cultural ethos is a commitment to respect for individual conscience in the absence of moral consensus.¹¹

At one level, this resort to procedural methods in the context of moral disagreement can be seen as a concession to an ethic of individualism that de facto prevails in public policy and our common life. However, there is another way to see the procedural recourse, one which transforms religious communities from a problem, because they make consensus elusive, to a resource, because they are concrete illustrations of pluralism. That is, a recourse to procedural dialogue can express a genuine commitment to recognize and value the diversity and pluralism of American culture. This moral diversity is best illustrated and culturally embodied not in the minimal relationship between the state and its citizens as autonomous individuals but rather in the ongoing value decisions enacted by religious communities. Indeed, NBAC encountered a theological and ethical pluralism of faith traditions that is a microcosm of society as a whole. As its final report noted: "The wide variety of religious traditions and beliefs epitomizes the pluralism of American culture."¹² Thus, a federal commission charged with making policy recommendations for a pluralistic society may see religious traditions that embody diversity and pluralism as an invaluable civic resource, a manifestation of what otherwise may be an academic or cultural abstraction.

Acknowledging this diversity helps counter the perception of religion as a monolithic institution that presents only problems for public policy; instead, faith traditions can be understood as mediators for civic discourse. As concrete manifestations of pluralism, diverse religious traditions can provide visible illustrations of what it means to respect, tolerate, and cooperate with others in the context of disagreements over both practical and ultimate issues. For example, in their testimony before NBAC, both Jewish and Christian scholars appealed to a common authoritative text, the Bible, to place research on cloning within a context of divine creative activity and of human beings as expressions of the divine image. Yet the scholars differed on the conclusions they drew from these basic theological claims and indeed appealed to different portions of the Bible for support. Jewish rabbis most frequently invoked Genesis 2 to underscore that human beings have received a divine mandate of mastery and healing, which in certain, albeit rare, circumstances could be compatible with cloning. Christian thinkers, meanwhile, tended to emphasize Genesis 1 in articulating a theological vision of the wholeness of creation expressed in equality, partnership, and sexual differentiation, themes that tended to support a vantage point more critical of human cloning. In general, the religious scholars relied on a diversity of moral sources, methods of reasoning, and normative positions on cloning, yet the discourse was carried out in a spirit of respect, tolerance for views with which one disagreed, and a sense of collaboration for the common good of society. This display of moral pluralism contributed to community rather than fragmenting into moral anarchy.

The diversity of religious sources, methods of reasoning, and normative positions on human cloning suggests commentators and philosophical bioethicists err in assuming a monolithic "religious" voice in bioethics. Moreover, religious positions that emphasize careful procedural deliberation and even cautious support on human cloning are significant because they indicate that, as with many other issues in bioethics, disputes should not be reduced to another salvo in the centuries-old conflict between religion and science. Put another way, religious perspectives are not, as sometimes claimed, necessarily antiscientific. Some religious views may support scientific research and technological applications, and not all ethical obstacles placed before scientific progress are religious in origin. Recognizing this feature of bioethics would help create common ground by which to initiate a much-needed constructive public and professional dialogue between religious communities and the scientific professions.

PROCESS AND OUTCOME: SOME UNRESOLVED ISSUES
My analysis suggests that the inclusionary policy discourse promoted by NBAC permitted religious perspectives to assume influence in several areas important to the deliberations of NBAC on cloning. These areas include the articulation of an ongoing, substantive ethical discussion on human cloning, which preceded, and in some respects anticipated, the current controversy; argumentation that supported shifting the burden of policy proof from harms to benefits; and a concrete context for the display of pluralism. It is unclear, ultimately, just how influential the views of religious traditions were, as is the extent to which NBAC actually took the opportunity to see in these traditions resources of moral wisdom.

The policy NBAC ultimately adopted on human cloning--continuing the moratorium on federal funding-was justified in secular, nonreligious terms, with "safety" and "unacceptable risks" to children created through cloning cited as paramount issues. The values of safety and risk are certainly important in religious considerations of cloning, but these moral claims supporting a funding moratorium did not require warrants distinctive to religious ethics for justification. By inviting religious discourse to inform its deliberative proceedings while offering nonreligious justifications for its policy recommendations, NBAC seemed to acknowledge a distinction between legitimate discourse in the process of policy deliberation and legitimate warrants for policy justification, a distinction vital to a democratic society. As NBAC moved from policy deliberation to justification, however, some difficult questions did emerge about the real significance and influence of religious ethical perspectives on the policy discussion. I want to highlight one issue regarding policy process and one concerning policy justification.

NBAC did not view its recommendations as definitively settling the human cloning controversy (for good reason, as it turns out, since not one of the recommendations has been enacted by Congress); indeed, it endorsed an ongoing process of deliberation. Two of the five policy recommendations in Cloning Human Beings advocate continuing public dialogue among a participatory and informed citizenry on issues relating to genetic research in general.¹³ In so doing, NBAC encouraged the enhancement of what I shall call "ethical literacy" (discussion of ethical and social implications) and "scientific literacy" (dissemination of information on new developments in the biomedical sciences). These are indispensable aspirations for informed civic discourse, but it is no less significant to note what these recommendations did not contain: any reference to increased understanding of religious perspectives. The omission of a complementary call for "religious literacy," which might have been stated in terms such as "awareness" or "sensitivity" or "respect," carries the unfortunate implication that religious thought has minimal value for the ongoing communal conversations--that is, that religion might be more a "problem" than a "resource."

One NBAC commissioner explained to me that religious perspectives on human cloning were subsumed within the recommendation that encourages enhanced understanding of ethical implications. In the Cloning Human Beings chapter on "ethical considerations," NBAC included some perspectives voiced by theologians; this integration of the theological into the ethical, the commissioner maintained, was carried over into the recommendation section of the report. Another commissioner commented that the endorsement of increased scientific literacy makes a special point to encourage public education especially in circumstances where the biomedical sciences affect "important cultural practices, values, and beliefs." This language clearly encompasses religious communities and faith traditions, although it is certainly broader than the religious realm.

Based on these observations, it can be inferred that NBAC intended religion to play some role in the ongoing policy deliberation it envisioned; what is not clear is whether this role is demarcated by "ethics" or by "culture" (or both). Needless to say, religion as a subset of ethics or as a subset of culture presents quite different roles, with ethics involving more normative or prescriptive claims and culture assuming a venue that is more interpretive and nonnormative. Perhaps politically, NBAC simply could not use the language of "religious" values, lest it appear that a federal commission was making a policy recommendation endorsing education about religion. The guiding policy principle on this interpretation is the posture of government neutrality towards religion, meaning that public awareness of the religious issues surrounding cloning necessarily must be channeled through some alternative language, such as "ethics" or "culture."

The difficulty with having ethics or culture as the placeholder for religious traditions is that such an approach presumes that the ethical or cultural value content of a tradition can be shorn off from the underlying theological context within which it finds coherence. The trade-off is that of a gain in public accessibility at the expense of a possible compromise in theological integrity. Such a trade-off might well function to relegate distinctive religious questions about human cloning to the periphery of civic discussions.

With respect to policy justification, NBAC, like its predecessor bioethics commissions, adopted a constricted approach, one that historically is rooted in The Belmont Report and its articulation of the principles of autonomy, beneficence, and justice. In formulating its recommendation on cloning, NBAC acknowledged a strong presumption in favor of respect for autonomy, which was supported from two different realms: freedom of scientific inquiry and liberty regarding reproductive choices. This presumption was weighed against the principle of beneficence, interpreted primarily in terms of a utilitarian assessment of risks and benefits. Using this procedure, NBAC determined that, at least provisionally, the presumption in favor of autonomy could be overridden because of the probability and magnitude of the risks to children.

This constricted realm of policy rationale and justification has little room for the modes of reasoning and moral norms articulated within religious traditions. Significantly, there is not even a strong emphasis in NBAC's recommendations regarding questions of distributive justice--an ethical consideration addressed by virtually all of the religious scholars--despite the fact that one NBAC commissioner commented to me that "a good justice argument" would be the most compelling in the context of cloning. Religious thought can support principles of autonomy, beneficence, and justice; indeed, many commentators find in these principles an overlapping consensus between religious and secular values.¹⁴ Yet this constricted policy discourse does not permit any distinctive religious normative ethic or value. Since the principles, and the conclusions they are invoked to justify, can be supported on nonreligious grounds, it can appear that religious ethical perspectives are dispensable in public policy. Indeed, this is the conclusion some writers in secular bioethics have drawn, an issue to which I now turn.

PHILOSOPHICAL CRITIQUES
NBAC has been criticized in philosophical literature and cultural commentaries for even giving religion a voice on the cloning controversy. For example, Gregory Pence, a philosopher who has written extensively on cloning, finds NBAC's attention to religious views "odd" and inexplicable. Since the religious claims advanced relied on the "usual vague reasons," Pence speculates that NBAC held some unspecified "bias" for religion.¹⁵ A prominent philosopher who served on earlier federal bioethics commissions, Daniel Wikler, has described the discussion of religious perspectives in Cloning Human Beings as "trite" and "philosophically useless."¹⁶

Not only philosophical bioethicists have challenged the presence of religious discourse in the NBAC deliberations. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Harvard scientist R.C. Lewontin expresses concern that NBAC's deliberations risked "legitimating questions . . . raised from a religious standpoint," all of which, in Lewontin's perspective, work to oppress individual autonomy. "By giving a separate and identifiable voice to explicitly religious views the commission has legitimated religious convictions on a front on which the issues of sex, reproduction, the definition of the family, and the status of fertilized eggs and fetuses are to be fought."¹⁷ Moreover, Lewontin contends, the theologians and religious scholars who presented testimony before NBAC did not experience moral anguish about the cloning issue. This is so because the religious quest concerns learning divine truth, which must be articulated in absolute terms. Once these absolutes are discerned and formulated, the answers to bioethical questions become rather straightforward. In this respect, Lewontin proposes that religion is "capable of abolishing hard ethical problems."

These comments suggest that otherwise very intelligent people can say some very stupid things about religion. Nonetheless, the critiques of religion broach some serious issues that deserve examination. One lesson that should be drawn from both the NBAC deliberations, as well as the perspectives voiced by these critics, is that religious thought has to meet a much higher burden of proof of policy relevance than science, philosophy, or law has to. Why this should be the case, however, is rather problematic.

I argued above that the policy relevance and contribution of religious discourse turns on several criteria: sensitivity, specificity, integrity, and accessibility. A kind of ethical laxity appears, however, with regard to the relevance and contribution of nonreligious discourse. The very technical scientific presentations to NBAC on cloning would have been inaccessible to the educated layperson; that is, a different standard of accessibility seems to be applied to scientific and religious discourse. The appeal to foundational narratives or "myths" of a religious tradition, such as the Genesis narrative, was deemed by some NBAC commissioners to contravene implicit standards of public accessibility. Yet philosophical bioethicists have invoked their own fictional portraits of human moral beginnings (such as the "state of nature" or the "veil of ignorance") to justify basic moral norms, such as liberty, equality, or distributive justice. However, NBAC's consideration of religious voices has undergone the most vigorous challenge by other scholars and even among some NBAC commissioners. In light of this, religious discourse in policy bioethics is held to a different and higher standard of policy relevance.¹⁸

Furthermore, Lewontin's analysis juxtaposes religious authoritarianism and individual autonomy, and it is clear in his account on which side "right" prevails. However, this interpretation essentially situates religious opposition to cloning within the "family values" agenda of politicized Christianity. Many of the religious scholars who endorsed a moratorium or a prohibition on human cloning simply do not share that political agenda. Thus, rather than trying to understand the arguments of religious scholars on their own merits, Lewontin has simply placed the controversy over cloning within the framework of the culture wars. This leads him to misread both the cloning debate and the religious voices that contributed to the debate. Yet once religion is stereotyped as social oppressor, it is rather easy to dismiss it, as Lewontin does, as rigid, doctrinaire, and mindless.

Alexis de Tocqueville enunciated a distinction between the influence of religion and the authority of religion that is in contrast to the above interpretation and that is crucial to civility.¹⁹ This distinction has implications for both public discourse on bioethics and for religious communities. A healthy, vigorous democratic society, in Tocqueville's view, requires the expression of religious views and the leavening influence of religious morality. Religious communities can bring this influence to bear on the society not only through participation in public forums and issuing resolutions on public issues, but most profoundly through practices and rituals in which beliefs are enacted and embodied. This is a quite different, but more fitting, portrayal of religion than is that of oppressive authority.

Indeed, in Tocqueville's view, religious influence will decline to the extent that faith communities aspire to power and authority, to establish their views of the good as definitive for the rest of society. Thus, religious communities must forswear pretensions to political power. Instead, their social role must be that of intermediate communities, interposed between the self and the state, protecting the self from the tyranny of authority and the common good from personal autonomy without accountability. Moreover, if religious communities are to have influence within bioethical controversies, including cloning, they must initiate a process of engaged citizenship among their adherents. This includes education about new breakthroughs in the biomedical sciences and dialogue about their theological ramifications. Social influence, as distinct from authority, will require religious communities to develop their own forums on such matters as genetics, cloning, and biotechnology.

CONCLUSION

Despite some reservations, NBAC welcomed the reflections of religious traditions as repositories of moral wisdom in the public deliberation over human cloning. In most circumstances, the perspectives on human cloning offered by religious scholars presumed a narrative context within which moral judgments are coherent. This context enables the scholar or teacher to retain a critical sense of fidelity and integrity to his or her tradition, rather than simply engaging in compromise. More generally, the moral education of the faith traditions is conveyed through foundational stories, myths, or narratives, in addition to reasoning from abstract principles. These stories provide self-understanding and moral orientation for the religious community as it encounters other communities in a pluralistic world. The stories provide suggestive, rather than definitive, moral guides. Most significantly in the context of public policy, narratives are frequently shareable and accessible. Thus, it is not necessary to demean religious discourse as vague, trite, or divisive. There is certainly no need to see in religious views about human cloning a new venue for the culture wars. Rather, religious communities assume political influence (not authority) through the stories they articulate and enact in a liberal culture that lacks its own narrative by which to guide its common life.

REFERENCES
1. Gina Kolata, Clone: The Road to Dolly and the Path Ahead (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1998).