Religious Minorities’ Resistance to State Mandates: A Cautionary Tale of Authority and Power

Abstract

Public emergencies often heighten tensions between liberal democratic commitments to rights, pluralism, and participation, and the perceived necessities of collective safety. During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments worldwide imposed sweeping public health mandates that frequently constrained religious practice. Yet this familiar narrative does not hold uniformly. This article examines Lakewood, New Jersey, as a case in which a powerful religious minority - the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jewish community - was able not merely to resist but, at times, to subordinate governmental and public health authority to religious authority. Drawing on political theory and sociology, the article distinguishes among three forms of authority: de jure (legal-rational), epistemic (expertise-based), and traditional or religious authority. It argues that conflicts during the pandemic arose from the interaction of these distinct sources of legitimacy. Lakewood’s entrenched traditional religious authority and limited effective enforcement of state mandates is attributed to decades of demographic growth, dense communal institutions, political mobilization, and geographic concentration. Weak and internally contested public health expertise early in the pandemic further undermined secular authority, creating space for religious leaders to assert primacy. The Lakewood case challenges assumptions that emergencies necessarily erode religious liberty, instead suggesting that empowered religious minorities may consolidate authority during crises. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of cooperation and negotiation among legal, epistemic, and religious authorities to avoid both public health failure and long-term political fragmentation.