Religion And Contemporary Liberalism

This collection of papers makes a step towards increased dialogue among philosophical liberals and their theological, sociological and legal critics. The text should be significant for those concerned with the place of religion within a liberal society.

Cécile Laborde argues that religion is more than a statement of belief or a moral code. It refers to comprehensive ways of life, theories of justice, modes of association, and vulnerable collective identities. By disaggregating these dimensions, she addresses questions about whether Western secularism and religion can be applied more universally.

Until now, there has been no direct and extensive engagement with the category of religion from liberal political philosophy. Over the last thirty years or so, liberals have tended to analyze religion under proximate categories such as 'conceptions of the good' (in debates about neutrality) or 'culture' (in debates about multiculturalism). US constitutional lawyers and French political theorists both tackled the category of religion head-on (under First Amendment jurisprudence and the political tradition of laïcité, respectively) but neither of these specialized national discourses found their way into mainstream liberal political philosophy. This is somewhat paradoxical because key liberal notions (state sovereignty, toleration, individual freedom, the rights of conscience, public reason) were elaborated as a response to 17th Century European Wars of Religion, and the fundamental structure of liberalism is rooted in the western experience of politico-religious conflict. So a reappraisal of this tradition - and of its validity in the light of contemporary challenges - is well overdue. This book offers the first extensive engagement with religion from liberal political philosophers. The volume analyzes, from within the liberal philosophical tradition itself, the key notions of conscience, public reason, non-establishment, and neutrality. Insofar as the contemporary religious revival is seen as posing a challenge to liberalism, it seems more crucial than ever to explore the specific resources that the liberal tradition has to answer it.

What is the place of religion in a pluralist democracy? The continuous presence of religion in the public sphere has raised anew normative and practical issues related to the role of religion in a democratic polity, generating spirited political debates in Western and non-Western contexts. Contemporary Political Philosophy and Religion provides an advanced introduction to, and a critical appraisal of, the major schools of political thought with a focus on the relationship between democracy and religion. Key features of this book include: Analyses of different political traditions: liberalism, republicanism, deliberative democracy, feminism, postmodernism, multiculturalism, and interculturalism; Critical discussions of key contemporary philosophers, such as John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, Susan Moller Okin, Martha Nussbaum, Will Kymlicka, Chandran Kukathas, and Bhiku Parekh; A pluralist approach that questions the strict divide between analytical and continental political philosophy; Discussion on the place of religion in politics from multiple perspectives by drawing on a plurality of political contexts, both Western and non-Western; Analyses of legal and political cases related to different religious traditions, for example, Islam, Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism. This comprehensive text will be of great use to students of religion and politics in the fields of political and legal theory, and religious and theological studies, while also offering critical insights and arguments that will be of interest to the experts in the field.

Traces the decline of Christianity in America since the 1950s, posing controversial arguments about the role of heresy in the nation's downfall while calling for a revival of traditional Christian practices.

In contemporary times, one of the common markers of a liberal society is the presence of a certain degree of diversity, indicated by coexistence of multiple ideas, beliefs, and cultural practices. But how does a complex and differentiated tradition of political thought like liberalism accommodate such diversity without jeopardizing social unity? Formulating a response to this, Dealing with Diversity puts forth an exhaustive theoretical classification of liberalism into comprehensive pro-autonomy, comprehensive pro-toleration, political pro-autonomy, and political pro-toleration. Through a dialectical method, the author offers a critical account of the most adequate system that allows genuine commitment to diversity on the part of liberal institutions, and analyses India’s religious pluralism in this light. The book seeks to provide a solution to the problem of ensuring a liberal, peaceful, and stable coexistence of different groups while giving space to community loyalties, religious belongings, and cultural traditions.