In my essay “Civil Religion in America,” first published in Daedalus in 1967, exactly forty years ago---which, unfortunately, quite a…
Is a global civil religion possible?
Religion in the public sphere
Scholars reassess a longstanding debate regarding the expression and interdiction of religion in the public sphere.
The fragility of global solidarity
In my last post, I suggested that the religious communities of the world may have something to contribute to the…
Religions and the postnational constellation
Granted that there is a global economy, global culture, global law, global civil society, even global festivals, why are global…
Inclusion and accountability in the public sphere
In his essay “Religion in the Public Sphere,” Habermas joins the debate between liberals and critics of liberalism on the…
Religious citizens & public reasons
Democratic citizens cannot determine in advance of actual public deliberation the reasons upon which their political decisions ought to be…
Cosmopolitanism and the ideal of postsecular public reason
Cosmopolitanism is not realistically imaginable as the transcendence of all forms of belonging. To propose a leap into traditionless secular…
Religious reasons & secular revelations
That Jürgen Habermas and I probably agree on most fundamental issues does not mean that there are no differences between…
Taking religion seriously
What distinguishes Habermas from Rawls on religion in the public sphere is not Habermas’s slightly amended view of public reason,…
An ideal of conscientious engagement
Many political theorists, pundits and even presidential candidates have advocated some variation on the claim that religious and secular reasons…
“Recognizing” religion
Religion appears in liberal theory first and foremost as an occasion for tolerance and neutrality. This orientation is reinforced by…