46 research outputs found
Beyond the conflict: religion in the public sphere and deliberative democracy
Traditionally, liberals have confined religion to the sphere of the ‘private’ or
‘non-political’. However, recent debates over the use of religious symbols in public
spaces, state financing of faith schools, and tax relief for religious organisations suggest
that this distinction is not particularly useful in easing the tension between liberal ideas of
equality among citizens and freedom of religion. This article deals with one aspect of this
debate, which concerns whether members of religious communities should receive
exemptions from regulations that place a distinctively heavy burden on them. For
supporters of exemptions, protection for diverse practices and religious beliefs justifies
such a special treatment. For others, this is a form of positive discrimination incompatible
with equal citizenship.
Drawing on Habermas’ understanding of churches as ‘communities of
interpretation’ this article explores possible alternative solutions to both the ‘rule-andexemption’
approach and the ‘neutralist’ approach. Our proposal rests on the idea of
mutual learning between secular and religious perspectives. On this interpretation, what is required is, firstly, generation and maintenance of public spaces in which there could
be discussion and dialogue about particular cases, and, secondly, evaluation of whether
the basic conditions of moral discourse are present in these spaces. Thus deliberation
becomes a touchstone for the building of a shared democratic etho