Religion and Politics

The relation between religion and politics continues to be an
important theme in political philosophy, despite the emergent
consensus (both among political theorists and in practical political
contexts, such as the United Nations) on the right to freedom of
conscience and on the need for some sort of separation between church
and state. One reason for the importance of this topic is that
religions often make strong claims on people's allegiance, and
universal religions make these claims on all people, rather than just
a particular community. For example, Islam has traditionally held that
all people owe obedience to Allah's will. Thus, it is probably
inevitable that religious commitments will sometimes come into
conflict with the demands of politics. But religious beliefs and
practices also potentially support politics in many ways. The extent
and form of this support is as important to political philosophers as
is the possibility for conflict. Moreover, there has been a growing
interest in minority groups and the political rights and entitlements
they are due. One result of this interest is substantial attention
given to the particular concerns and needs of minority groups who are
distinguished by their religion, as opposed to ethnicity, gender, or
wealth.

This article surveys some of the philosophical problems raised by the
various ways in which religion and politics may intersect. The first
two main sections are devoted to topics that have been important in
previous eras, especially the early modern era, although in both
sections there is discussion of analogs to these topics that are more
pressing for contemporary political thought: (1) establishment of a
church or faith versus complete separation of church and state; and
(2) toleration versus coercion of religious belief, and current
conflicts between religious practice and political authority. The
second pair of sections is devoted to problems that, for the most
part, have come to the fore of discussion only in recent times: (3)
liberal citizenship and its demands on private self-understanding; and
(4) the role of religion in public deliberation.

1. Establishment and Separation of Church and State

While the topic of establishment has receded in importance at present,
it has been central to political thought in the West since at least
the days of Constantine. In the wake of the Protestant Reformation,
European societies wrestled with determining exactly what roles church
and state should play in each other's sphere, and so the topic of
establishment became especially pressing in the early modern era,
although there was also substantial discussion in the Middle Ages
(Dante, 1995). The term "establishment" can refer to any of several
possible arrangements for a religion in a society's political life.
These arrangements include the following:

1. A religious body may be a "state" church in the sense that it
has an exclusive right to practice its faith.
2. A church may be supported through taxes and subject to the
direction of the government (for example, the monarch is still
officially the head of the Church of England, and the Prime Minister
is responsible for selecting the Archbishop of Canterbury).
3. Particular ecclesiastical officials may have, in virtue of their
office, an established role in political institutions.
4. A church may simply have a privileged role in certain public,
political ceremonies (for example, inaugurations, opening of
parliament, etc.).
5. Instead of privileging a particular religious group, a state
could simply enshrine a particular creed or belief system as its
official religion, much like the "official bird" or "official flower."

Note that these options are not mutually exclusive—a state could adopt
some or all of these measures. What is central to them is they each
involve the conferral of some sort of official status. A weaker form
of an established church is what Robert Bellah (1967: 3-4) calls
"civil religion," in which a particular church or religion does not
exactly have official status, and yet the state uses religious
concepts in an explicitly public way. For an example of civil
religion, he points to Abraham Lincoln's use of Christian imagery of
slavery and freedom in justifying the American Civil War.

Contemporary philosophical defenses of outright establishment of a
church or faith are few, but a famous defense of establishment was
given by T. S. Eliot in the last century (1936, 1967). Trained as a
philosopher (he completed, but did not defend, a dissertation at
Harvard on the philosophy of F. H. Bradley) and deeply influenced by
Aristotle, Eliot believed that democratic societies rejected the
influence of an established church at their peril, for in doing so
they cut themselves off from the kind of ethical wisdom that can come
only from participation in a tradition. As a result, he argued, such a
society would degenerate into tyranny and/or social and cultural
fragmentation.

Even today, there are strains of conservatism that argue for
establishment by emphasizing the benefits that will accrue to the
political system or society at large (Scruton, 1980). According to
this line of thought, the healthy polis requires a substantial amount
of pre- or extra-political social cohesion. More specifically, a
certain amount of social cohesion is necessary both to ensure that
citizens see themselves as sufficiently connected to each other (so
that they will want to cooperate politically), and to ensure that they
have a common framework within which they can make coherent collective
political decisions. This cohesion in turn is dependent on a
substantial amount of cultural homogeneity, especially with respect to
adherence to certain values. One way of ensuring this kind of
homogeneity is to enact one of the forms of establishment mentioned
above, such as displaying religious symbols in political buildings and
monuments, or by including references to a particular religion in
political ceremonies.

Rather than emphasizing the distinctively political benefits of
establishment, a different version of this argument could appeal to
the ethical benefits that would accrue to citizens themselves as
private individuals. For example, on many understandings of politics,
one of the purposes of the polis is to ensure that citizens have the
resources necessary for living a choiceworthy, flourishing life. One
such resource is a sense of belonging to a common culture that is
rooted in a tradition, as opposed to a sense of rootlessness and
social fragmentation (Sandel, 1998; MacIntyre, 1984). Thus, in order
to ensure that citizens have this sense of cultural cohesion, the
state must (or at least may) in some way privilege a religious
institution or creed. Of course, a different version of this argument
could simply appeal to the truth of a particular religion and to the
good of obtaining salvation, but given the persistent intractability
of settling such questions, this would be a much more difficult
argument to make.

Against these positions, the liberal tradition has generally opposed
establishment in all of the aforementioned forms. Contemporary
liberals typically appeal to the value of fairness. It is claimed, for
example, that the state should remain neutral among religions because
it is unfair—especially for a democratic government that is supposed
to represent all of the people composing its demos—to intentionally
disadvantage (or unequally favor) any group of citizens in their
pursuit of the good as they understand it, religious or otherwise
(Rawls, 1971). Similarly, liberals often argue that fairness precludes
devoting tax revenues to religious groups because doing so amounts to
forcing non-believers to subsidize religions that they reject. A
different approach for liberals is to appeal directly to the right to
practice one's religion, which is derivable from a more general right
to freedom of conscience. If all people have such a right, then it is
morally wrong for the state to force them to participate in religious
practices and institutions that they would otherwise oppose, such as
forcing them to take part in public prayer. It is also wrong, for the
same reason, to force people to support financially (via taxation)
religious institutions and communities that they would not otherwise
wish to support.

In addition, there are liberal consequentialist concerns about
establishment, such as the possibility that it will result in or
increase the likelihood of religious repression and curtailment of
liberty (Audi, 2000: 37-41). While protections and advantages given to
one faith may be accompanied by promises to refrain from persecuting
adherents of rival faiths, the introduction of political power into
religion moves the state closer to interferences which are clearly
unjust, and it creates perverse incentives for religious groups to
seek more political power in order to get the upper hand over their
rivals. From the perspective of many religious people themselves,
moreover, there are worries that a political role for their religion
may well corrupt their faith community and its mission.
2. Toleration and Accommodation of Religious Belief and Practice

As European and American societies faced the growing plurality of
religious beliefs, communities, and institutions in the early modern
era, one of the paramount social problems was determining whether and
to what extent they should be tolerated. One of the hallmark treatises
on this topic remains John Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration. A
political exile himself at the time of its composition, Locke argues
(a) that it is futile to attempt to coerce belief because it does not
fall to the will to accept or reject propositions, (b) that it is
wrong to restrict religious practice so long as it does not interfere
with the rights of others, and (c) that allowing a wide range of
religious groups will likely prevent any one of them from becoming so
powerful as to threaten the peace. Central to his arguments is a
Protestant view of a religious body as a voluntary society composed
only of those people who choose to join it, a view that is in sharp
contrast to the earlier medieval view of the church as having
authority over all people within a particular geographic domain. It is
perhaps unsurprising, then, that the limits of Locke's toleration are
coextensive with Protestantism; atheists and Catholics cannot be
trusted to take part in society peacefully because the former do not
see themselves as bound by divine law and the latter are beholden to a
foreign sovereign (the Pope). Still, Locke's Letter makes an important
step forward toward a more tolerant and pluralistic world. In contrast
to Locke, Thomas Hobbes sees religion and its divisiveness as a source
of political instability, and so he argues that the sovereign has the
right to determine which opinions may be publicly espoused and
disseminated, a power necessary for maintaining civil peace (see
Leviathan xviii, 9).

Like the issue of establishment, the general issue of whether people
should be allowed to decide for themselves which religion to believe
in has not received much attention in recent times, again because of
the wide consensus on the right of all people to liberty of
conscience. However, despite this agreement on liberty of belief,
modern states nevertheless face challenging questions of toleration
and accommodation pertaining to religious practice, and these
questions are made more difficult by the fact that they often involve
multiple ideals which pull in different directions. Some of these
questions concern actions which are inspired by religion and are
either obviously or typically unjust. For example, violent
fundamentalists feel justified in killing and persecuting infidels—how
should society respond to them? While no one seriously defends the
right to repress other people, it is less clear to what extent, say,
religious speech that calls for such actions should be tolerated in
the name of a right to free speech. A similar challenge concerns
religious objections to certain medical procedures that are necessary
to save a life. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses believe that their
religion precludes their accepting blood transfusions, even to save
their lives. While it seems clearly wrong to force someone to undergo
even lifesaving treatment if she objects to it (at least with
sufficient rationality, which of course is a difficult topic in
itself), and it seems equally wrong to deny lifesaving treatment to
someone who needs it and is not refusing it, the issue becomes less
clear when parents have religious objections to lifesaving treatment
for their children. In such a case, there are at least three values
that ordinarily demand great respect and latitude: (a) the right to
follow one's own religion, not simply in affirming its tenets but in
living the lifestyle it prescribes; (b) the state's legitimate
interest in protecting its citizens (especially vulnerable ones like
children) from being harmed; and (c) the right of parents to raise
their children as they see fit and in a way that expresses their
values.

A second kind of challenge for a society that generally values
toleration and accommodation of difference pertains to a religious
minority's actions and commitments which are not themselves unjust,
and yet are threatened by the pursuit of other goals on the part of
the larger society, or are directly forbidden by law. For example,
Quakers and other religious groups are committed to pacifism, and yet
many of them live in societies that expect all male citizens to serve
in the military or register for the draft. Other groups perform
religious rituals that involve the use of illegal substances, such as
peyote. Does the right to practice one's faith exempt one from the
requirement to serve in the military or obey one's country's drug
policies? Is it fair to exempt such people from the burdens other
citizens must bear?

Many examples of this second kind of challenge are addressed in the
literature on education and schooling. In developed societies (and
developing ones, for that matter), a substantial education is
necessary for citizens to be able to achieve a decent life for
themselves. In addition, many states see education as a process by
which children can learn values that the state deems important for
active citizenship and/or for social life. However, the pursuit of
this latter goal raises certain issues for religious parents. In the
famous case of Mozert v. Hawkins, some parents objected for religious
reasons to their children being taught from a reading curriculum that
presented alternative beliefs and ways of life in a favorable way, and
consequently the parents asked that their children be excused from
class when that curriculum was being taught. Against the wishes of
these parents, some liberals believe that the importance of teaching
children to respect the value of gender equality overrides the merit
of such objections, even if they appeal directly to the parents'
religious rights (Macedo, 2000).

Similarly, many proposals for educational curricula are aimed at
developing a measure of autonomy in children, which often involves
having them achieve a certain critical distance from their family
background, with its traditions, beliefs, and ways of life (Callan,
1997; Brighouse, 2000). The idea is that only then can children
autonomously choose a way of life for themselves, free of undue
influence of upbringing and custom. A related argument holds that this
critical distance will allow children to develop a sufficient sense of
respect for different social groups, a respect that is necessary for
the practice of democratic citizenship. However, this critical
distance is antithetical to authentic religious commitment, at least
on some accounts (see the following section). Also, religious parents
typically wish to pass on their faith to their children, and doing so
involves cultivating religious devotion through practices and rituals,
rather than presenting their faith as just one among many equally good
(or true) ones. For such parents, passing on their religious faith is
central to good parenting, and in this respect it does not differ from
passing on good moral values, for instance. Thus, politically mandated
education that is aimed at developing autonomy runs up against the
right of some parents to practice their religion and the right to
raise their children as they choose. Many, though not all, liberals
argue that autonomy is such an important good that its promotion
justifies using techniques that make it harder for such parents to
pass on their faith—such a result is an unfortunate side-effect of a
desirable or necessary policy.

Yet a different source of political conflict for religious students in
recent years concerns the teaching of evolution in science classes.
Some religious parents of children in public schools see the teaching
of evolution as a direct threat to their faith, insofar as it implies
the falsity of their biblical-literalist understanding of the origins
of life. They argue that it is unfair to expect them to expose their
children to teaching that directly challenges their religion (and to
fund it with their taxes). Among these parents, some want schools to
include discussions of intelligent design and creationism (some who
write on this issue see intelligent design and creationism as
conceptually distinct positions; others see no significant difference
between them), while others would be content if schools skirted the
issue altogether, refusing to teach anything at all about the origin
of life or the evolution of species. Their opponents see the former
proposal as an attempt to introduce an explicitly religious worldview
into the classroom, hence one that runs afoul of the separation of
church and state. Nor would they be satisfied with ignoring the issue
altogether, for evolution is an integral part of the framework of
modern biology and a well-established scientific theory.

Conflicts concerning religion and politics arise outside of curricular
contexts, as well. For example, in France, a law was recently passed
that made it illegal for students to wear clothing and adornments that
are explicitly associated with a religion. This law was especially
opposed by students whose religion explicitly requires them to wear
particular clothing, such as a hijab or a turban. The justification
given by the French government was that such a measure was necessary
to honor the separation of church and state, and useful for ensuring
that the French citizenry is united into a whole, rather than divided
by religion. However, it is also possible to see this law as an
unwarranted interference of the state in religious practice. If
liberty of conscience includes not simply a right to believe what one
chooses, but also to give public expression to that belief, then it
seems that people should be free to wear clothing consistent with
their religious beliefs.

Crucial to this discussion of the effect of public policy on religious
groups is an important distinction regarding neutrality. The liberal
state is supposed to remain neutral with regard to religion (as well
as race, sexual orientation, physical status, age, etc.). However, as
Charles Larmore points out in Patterns of Moral Complexity (1987:
42ff), there are different senses of neutrality, and some policies may
fare well with respect to one sense and poorly with respect to
another. In one sense, neutrality can be understood in terms of a
procedure that is justified without appeal to any conception of the
human good. In this sense, it is wrong for the state to intend to
disadvantage one group of citizens, at least for its own sake and with
respect to practices that are not otherwise unjust or politically
undesirable. Thus it would be a violation of neutrality in this sense
(and therefore wrong) for the state simply to outlaw the worship of
Allah. Alternatively, neutrality can be understood in terms of effect.
The state abides by this sense of neutrality by not taking actions
whose consequences are such that some individuals or groups in society
are disadvantaged in their pursuit of the good. For a state committed
to neutrality thus understood, even if it were not explicitly
intending to disadvantage a particular group, any such disadvantage
that may result is a prima facie reason to revoke the policy that
causes it. Thus, if the government requires school attendance on a
religious group's holy days, for example, and doing so makes it harder
for them to practice their faith, such a requirement counts as a
failure of neutrality. The attendance requirement may nevertheless be
unavoidable, but as it stands, it is less than optimal. Obviously,
this is a more demanding standard, for it requires the state to
consider possible consequences—both short term and long term—on a wide
range of social groups and then choose from those policies that do not
have bad consequences (or the one that has the fewest and least bad).
For most, and arguably all, societies, it is a standard that cannot
feasibly be met. Consequently, most liberals argue that the state
should be neutral in the first sense, but it need not be neutral in
the second sense. Thus, if the institutions and practices of a
basically just society make it more challenging for some religious
people to preserve their ways of life, it is perhaps regrettable, but
not unjust, so long as these institutions and practices are justified
impartially.
3. Liberalism and Its Demands on Private Self-Understanding

In addition to examining issues of toleration and accommodation on the
level of praxis, there has also been much recent work about the extent
to which particular political theories themselves are acceptable or
unacceptable from religious perspectives. One reason for this emphasis
comes from the emergence of the school of thought known as "political
liberalism." In his book of that name, John Rawls (1996) signaled a
new way of thinking about liberalism that is captured by the idea of
an "overlapping consensus." An overlapping consensus refers to
reasoned agreement on principles of justice by citizens who hold a
plurality of mutually exclusive comprehensive doctrines (a term that
includes religious beliefs, metaphysical positions, theories of
morality and of the good life, etc., and may also include beliefs such
as theories of epistemic justification). Rather than requiring
citizens to accept any particular comprehensive doctrine of
liberalism, a theory of justice should aim at deriving principles that
each citizen may reasonably accept from his or her own comprehensive
doctrine. Thus, the consensus is on the principles themselves, rather
than the justification for those principles, and as such the
conception of justice offered is "political" rather than
"metaphysical." This view of liberal justice marked a break with
Rawls's earlier "metaphysical" liberalism as expressed in A Theory of
Justice, although debate continues among commentators about just how
sharp a break political liberalism is and whether or not it is an
improvement over the earlier view. The aim, then, for a political
conception of justice is for all reasonable citizens to be able to
affirm principles of justice without having to weaken their hold on
their own private comprehensive views. However, some writers have
argued that this is impossible—even a "thin" political conception of
justice places strains on some comprehensive doctrines, and these
strains might be acute for religious citizens. One such argument comes
from Eomann Callan, in his book Creating Citizens. Callan points to
the role played in Rawls' theory of "the burdens of judgment" (see
Rawls, 1996: § 2): fundamentalists will not be able to accept the
burdens of judgment in their private lives, because doing so requires
them to view rival faiths and other beliefs as having roughly equal
epistemic worth. If Rawlsian liberalism requires acceptance of the
burdens of judgment, then the overlapping consensus will not include
some kinds of religious citizens.

A different way that liberal citizenship might conflict with a
religious person's self-understanding is if the former requires a
commitment to a kind of fallibilism while the latter requires (or at
least encourages) certitude in one's religious belief. Richard Rorty
has been read as arguing for the need for liberal democratic citizens
to privatize their faith (1999) and to hold their beliefs at an
"ironic" distance—that is, provisionally, and with a healthy
skepticism about the extent to which they decisively capture reality
(1989). But this kind of irony is not possible to maintain along with
authentic faith, at least as the latter is understood in many
religious traditions that emphasize the importance of certitude in
one's belief and totality of one's commitment to God.

Thus, a religious citizen could feel an acute conflict between her
identity qua citizen and qua religious adherent. One way of resolving
the conflict is to argue that one aspect of her identity should take
priority over the other. Witness the conflict experienced by the
protagonist in Sophocles' Antigone, as she buries her brother in
defiance of Creon's decree; in doing so, she acknowledges that her
religious duties supersede her civic duties, at least in that context.
For many religious citizens, political authority is subservient to—and
perhaps even derived from—divine authority, and therefore they see
their religious commitments as taking precedence over their civic
ones. On the other hand, civic republicanism has tended to view a
person's civic role as paramount because it has seen participation in
politics as partly constitutive of the human good (Dagger, 1997).

In contrast to these approaches, the liberal tradition has tended to
refuse to prioritize one aspect of an individual's identity over any
other, holding that it is the individual's task to determine which is
most important or significant to her; this task is often seen as the
reason for the importance of personal autonomy (Kymlicka, 2002). But
this tendency makes it more challenging for liberals to adjudicate
conflicts between religion and politics. One possibility is for the
liberal to argue that the demands of justice are prior to the pursuit
of the good (which would include religious practice). If so, and if
the demands of justice require one to honor duties of citizenship,
then one might argue that people should not allow their religious
beliefs and practices to restrict or interfere with their roles as
citizens. However, not even all liberals accept the claim that justice
is prior to the good, nor is it a settled issue in the literature on
political obligation that norms of justice can successfully ground
universal duties of citizenship (see "The Obligation to Obey Law" and
"Political Obligation").
4. Religious Reasons in Public Deliberation

One recent trend in democratic theory is an emphasis on the need for
democratic decisions to emerge from processes that are informed by
deliberation on the part of the citizenry, rather than from a mere
aggregation of preferences. As a result, there has been much attention
devoted to the kinds of reasons that may or may not be appropriate for
public deliberation in a pluralistic society. While responses to this
issue have made reference to all kinds of beliefs, much of the
discussion has centered on religious beliefs. One reason for this
emphasis is that, both historically and in contemporary societies,
religion has played a central role in political life, and often it has
done so for the worse (witness the wars of religion in Europe that
came in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, for example). As such,
it is a powerful political force, and it strikes many who write about
this issue as a source of social instability and repression. Another
reason is that, due to the nature of religious belief itself, if any
kind of belief is inappropriate for public deliberation, then
religious beliefs will be the prime candidate, either because they are
irrational, or immune to critique, or unverifiable, etc. In other
words, religion provides a useful test case in evaluating theories of
public deliberation.

Much of the literature in this area has been prompted by Rawls'
development of his notion of public reason, which he introduced in
Political Liberalism and offered (in somewhat revised form) in his
essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited." His view is not as
clearly expressed as one would wish, and it evolved after the
publication of Political Liberalism, but the idea is something like
this: when reasonable citizens engage in public deliberation on
constitutional essentials, they must do so by offering reasons that do
not appeal to any comprehensive doctrine. Since citizens have sharp
disagreements on comprehensive doctrines, any law or policy that
necessarily depends on such a doctrine could not be reasonably
accepted by those who reject the doctrine. A prime example of a
justification for a law that is publicly inaccessible in this way is
one that is explicitly religious. For example, if the rationale for a
law that outlawed working on Sunday was simply that it displeases the
Christian God, non-Christians could not reasonably accept it.

Rawls makes important exceptions to this norm of public discourse, and
he seems to have gradually softened its requirements somewhat as he
developed his views on public reason, but his intention was to ensure
that democratic outcomes could be reasonably accepted by all citizens,
and even in his theory's latest manifestations he seemed to view
"public" reasons as those which could reasonably be accepted by
everyone rather than explicitly drawing on comprehensive views.

A different explanation of "reasons which could be reasonably accepted
by everyone" comes from Robert Audi, who argues that the set of such
reasons is restricted to secular reasons. Since only secular reasons
are publicly accessible in this way, civic virtue requires offering
secular reasons and being sufficiently motivated by them to support or
oppose the law or policy under debate. Religious reasons are not
suitable for public deliberation since they are not shared by the
non-religious (or people of differing religions) and people who reject
these reasons would justifiably resent being coerced on the basis of
them. However, secular reasons can include non-religious comprehensive
doctrines, such as particular moral theories or conceptions of the
human good, and so Audi's conception of public deliberation allows
some views to play a role that would be excluded by conceptions that
restrict all comprehensive doctrines.

Proponents of the idea that the set of suitable reasons for public
deliberation does not include certain or all comprehensive doctrines
have come to be known as "exclusivists," and their opponents as
"inclusivists." The latter group sometimes focuses on weaknesses of
exclusivism—if exclusivism is false, then inclusivism is true by
default. Others try to show that religious justifications can
contribute positively to democratic polities; the two most common
examples in support of this position are the nineteenth-century
abolitionist movement and the twentieth-century civil rights movement,
both of which achieved desirable political change in large part by
appealing directly to the Christian beliefs prevalent in Great Britain
and the United States.

A third inclusivist argument is that it is unfair to hamstring certain
groups in their attempts to effect change that they believe is
required by justice. Consider the case of abortion, an example Rawls
discusses in a famous footnote in Political Liberalism (243-244) and
again in "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited" (169). Many—though not
all—who defend the pro-life position do so by appealing to the actual
or potential personhood of fetuses. But "person" is a conceptually
"thick" metaphysical concept, and as such it is one that is subject to
reasonable disagreement. Consequently, on some versions of
exclusivism, citizens who wish to argue against abortion should do so
without claiming that fetuses are persons. But for these citizens,
personhood is the most important part of the abortion issue, for the
ascription of "person" is not simply a metaphysical issue—it is a
moral issue, as well, insofar as it is an attempt to discern the
bounds of the moral community. To ask them to refrain from focusing on
this aspect of the issue looks like an attempt to settle the issue by
default, then. Instead, inclusivists argue that citizens should feel
free to introduce any considerations whatsoever that they think are
relevant to the topic under public discussion.
5. Conclusion

Although secularism is proceeding rapidly in many of the world's
societies, and although this trend seems connected in some way to the
process of economic development, nevertheless religion continues to be
an important political phenomenon throughout the world, for multiple
reasons. Even the most secularized countries (Sweden is typically
cited as a prime example) include substantial numbers of people who
still identify themselves as religious. Moreover, many of these
societies are currently experiencing immigration from groups who are
more religious than native-born populations and who follow religions
that are alien to the host countries' cultural heritage. These people
are often given substantial democratic rights, sometimes including
formal citizenship. And the confrontation between radical Islam and
the West shows few signs of abating anytime soon. Consequently, the
problems discussed above will likely continue to be important ones for
political philosophers in the foreseeable future.
6. References and Further Reading

* Audi, Robert. Religious Commitment and Secular Reason.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
o Much of this book is an expression of Audi's position on
public deliberation, but there is also discussion of the separation of
church and state.
* Audi, Robert, and Nicholas Wolterstorff. Religion in the Public
Square: The Place of Religious Reasons in Political Debate. Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.
o An accessible, well-reasoned exchange between an
inclusivist (Wolterstorff) and an exclusivist (Audi), with rebuttals.
* Bellah, Robert N. "American Civil Religion." Daedalus: Journal
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 96.1 (1967): 1-21.
* Brighouse, Harry. School Choice and Social Justice. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003.
o Portions of this book deal with education for autonomy and
religious opposition to such proposals.
* Burtt, Shelley, "Religious Parents, Secular Schools: A Liberal
Defense of Illiberal Education" The Review of Politics 56.1 (1994):
51-70.
* Callan, Eomann, Creating Citizens: Political Education and
Liberal Democracy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
o An exploration of civic education in light of Rawlsian
political liberalism.
* Carter, Stephen L. The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law
and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion. New York: Basic Books,
1993.
* Clanton, J. Caleb. Religion and Democratic Citizenship: Inquiry
and Conviction in the American Public Square. Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2007.
* Coleman, John A., ed. Christian Political Ethics. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2007.
o A collection of essays on political topics from a wide
array of Christian traditions.
* Cuneo, Terence, ed. Religion in the Liberal Polity. Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.
o A collection of essays on religion, rights, public
deliberation, and related topics.
* Dagger, Richard. Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and
Republican Liberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
* Dante. De monarchia. Tr. Prue Shaw. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995.
o Book 3 of this work concerns the relation (and division)
between Church and State.
* Eberle, Christopher J. Religious Convictions in Liberal
Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002
o A thorough critique of the varieties of exclusivism.
* Eliot, T. S. "Catholicism and International Order." Essays,
Ancient and Modern. London: Faber and Faber, 1936.
* Eliot, T. S. "The Idea of a Christian Society" and "Notes Toward
the Definition of Culture." Christianity and Culture. New York:
Harcourt Brace & Company, 1967.
* Gaus, Gerald F. Justificatory Liberalism: An Essay on
Epistemology and Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996.
* Gaus, Gerald F. "The Place of Religious Belief in Liberal
Politics." In Multiculturalism and Moral Conflict, edited by Maria
Dimova-Cookson. London: Routledge, 2008.
* Greenawalt, Kent. Religious Convictions and Political Choice.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
* Greenawalt, Kent. Private Consciences and Public Reasons.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
* Gutmann, Amy. Democratic Education. Rev. ed. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1999.
* Gutmann, Amy. Identity in Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2003.
o Includes a helpful chapter on religious identity in politics.
* Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis, IN:
Hackett Publishing Co., 1994.
* Kymlicka, Will. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of
Minority Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
* Kymlicka, Will. Contemporary Political Philosophy: An
Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
o A fine introduction to the field, useful for beginners but
detailed enough to interest experienced readers.
* Larmore, Charles. Patterns of Moral Complexity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987.
* Locke, John. A Letter Concerning Toleration. Ed. James Tully.
Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1983.
* Macedo, Stephen. Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a
Multicultural Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2003.
o Contains extensive discussion of religion and liberal
civic education.
* MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 2nd
ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.
o An influential critique of modernity and the philosophies
which (he argues) have given rise to it.
* Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education. Nos. 86-6144,
86-6179, and 87-5024. United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
July 9, 1987.
o Landmark federal case concerning parental religious
objections to particular forms of education.
* Neuhaus, Richard John. The Naked Public Square: Religion and
Democracy in America. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B Eerdmans, 1986.
o An influential book among religious conservatives and
neoconservatives.
* Okin, Susan Moller, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Ed.
Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard, and Martha C. Nussbaum. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1999.
o Parts of the discussion in this book concern the status of
women in religious minorities.
* Perry, Michael J. Under God?: Religious Faith and Liberal
Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
* Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1971.
* Rawls, John. Political Liberalism.New York: Columbia University
Press, 1996.
* Rawls, John. "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited." The Law of
Peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
* Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989.
* Rorty, Richard. "Religion as Conversation-stopper." Philosophy
and Social Hope. New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1999.
* Sandel, Michael J. Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of
a Public Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1996.
* Sandel, Michael J. Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Rev.
ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
o A thorough critique of Rawlsian liberalism from a broadly
communitarian perspective, although Sandel has tended to resist that
label.
* Scruton, Roger. The Meaning of Conservatism. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980.
* Stout, Jeffrey. Democracy and Tradition. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2003.
* Talisse, Robert B. Democracy After Liberalism: Pragmatism and
Deliberative Politics. London: Routledge Press, 2004.
* Weithman, Paul J., ed. Religion and Contemporary Liberalism.
Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997.
o This collection of essays concerns many aspects of the
intersection of religion and politics.
* Weithman, Paul J.. Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
o Argues that religion has positive contributions to make
toward civic ends.
* Wisconsin v. Yoder. Nos. 70-110. United States Supreme Court.
May 15, 1972.
o An important case concerning the right of Amish parents to
exempt their children from the requirement to attend school up to a
specified age.