How should liberalism understand – and deal with – religion? Cécile Laborde offers powerful new answers in her book Liberalism’s Religion; this collection subjects that theory to critical scrutiny from an array of scholars, thereby advancing the scholarly debate. Religion has recently become the object of a significant and growing literature in legal and political philosophy, for example: What does it mean to guarantee religious freedom? When the religious freedom of some citizens appears in conflict with the religious freedom of others, what should be done? May religious reasons be legitimately invoked to justify political decisions, or should they be excluded from public deliberation? In the recent literature, the dominant liberal response to these questions is based on an egalitarian theory of religion. In her major new work, Liberalism’s Religion, Cécile Laborde argues that the prevailing liberal-egalitarian approach toward religion is misguided and in need of crucial revision. In doing so, she offers powerful and original answers, organised by her distinctive thesis that liberals must radically rethink how we conceive religion itself. This volume subjects her powerful new theory to scrutiny from an array of scholars, engaging each dimension of it. The volume includes a comprehensive reply by Laborde to the various points raised by these scholars, and therefore moves the debate forward, highlighting key issues that should be addressed in the future in the literature on religion and political philosophy. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

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.

Liberal societies conventionally treat religion as unique under the law, requiring both special protection (as in guarantees of free worship) and special containment (to keep religion and the state separate). But recently this idea that religion requires a legal exception has come under fire from those who argue that religion is no different from any other conception of the good, and the state should treat all such conceptions according to principles of neutrality and equal liberty. Cécile Laborde agrees with much of this liberal egalitarian critique, but she argues that a simple analogy between the good and religion misrepresents the complex relationships among religion, law, and the state. Religion serves as more than a statement of belief about what is true, or a code of moral and ethical conduct. It also refers to comprehensive ways of life, political theories of justice, modes of voluntary association, and vulnerable collective identities. Disaggregating religion into its various dimensions, as Laborde does, has two clear advantages. First, it shows greater respect for ethical and social pluralism by ensuring that whatever treatment religion receives from the law, it receives because of features that it shares with nonreligious beliefs, conceptions, and identities. Second, it dispenses with the Western, Christian-inflected conception of religion that liberal political theory relies on, especially in dealing with the issue of separation between religion and state. As a result, Liberalism's Religion offers a novel answer to the question: Can Western theories of secularism and religion be applied more universally in non-Western societies?--

Religious liberalism in America has often been equated with an ecumenical Protestant establishment. By contrast, American Religious Liberalism draws attention to the broad diversity of liberal cultures that shapes America's religious movements. The essays gathered here push beyond familiar tropes and boundaries to interrogate religious liberalism's dense cultural leanings by looking at spirituality in the arts, the politics and piety of religious cosmopolitanism, and the interaction between liberal religion and liberal secularism. Readers will find a kaleidoscopic view of many of the progressive strands of America's religious past and present in this richly provocative volume.

How should liberalism understand - and deal with - religion? Cécile Laborde offers powerful new answers in her book Liberalism's Religion; this collection subjects that theory to critical scrutiny from an array of scholars, thereby advancing the scholarly debate. Religion has recently become the object of a significant and growing literature in legal and political philosophy, for example: What does it mean to guarantee religious freedom? When the religious freedom of some citizens appears in conflict with the religious freedom of others, what should be done? May religious reasons be legitimately invoked to justify political decisions, or should they be excluded from public deliberation? In the recent literature, the dominant liberal response to these questions is based on an egalitarian theory of religion. In her major new work, Liberalism's Religion, Cécile Laborde argues that the prevailing liberal-egalitarian approach toward religion is misguided and in need of crucial revision. In doing so, she offers powerful and original answers, organised by her distinctive thesis that liberals must radically rethink how we conceive religion itself. This volume subjects her powerful new theory to scrutiny from an array of scholars, engaging each dimension of it. The volume includes a comprehensive reply by Laborde to the various points raised by these scholars, and therefore moves the debate forward, highlighting key issues that should be addressed in the future in the literature on religion and political philosophy. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

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.

Leading authors in politics, law, sociology and theology discuss what the proper place of religion is in a liberal state.