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Negotiating religious diversity, as well as negotiating different
forms and degrees of commitment to religious belief and identity,
constitutes a major challenge for all societies. Recent
developments such as the 'de-secularisation' of the world, the
transformation and globalisation of religion and the attacks of
September 11 have made religious claims and religious actors much
more visible in the public sphere. This volume provides multiple
perspectives on the processes through which religious communities
create or defend their place in a given society, both in history
and in our world today. Offering a critical, cross-disciplinary
investigation into processes of negotiating religion and religious
diversity, the contributors present new insights on the meaning and
substance of negotiation itself. This volume draws on diverse
historical, sociological, geographic, legal and political
theoretical approaches to take a close look at the religious and
political agents involved in such processes as well as the
political, social and cultural context in which they take place.
Its focus on the European experiences that have shaped not only the
history of 'negotiating religion' in this region but also around
the world, provides new perspectives for critical inquiries into
the way in which contemporary societies engage with religion. This
study will be of interest to academics, lawyers and scholars in law
and religion, sociology, politics and religious history.
Negotiating religious diversity, as well as negotiating different
forms and degrees of commitment to religious belief and identity,
constitutes a major challenge for all societies. Recent
developments such as the 'de-secularisation' of the world, the
transformation and globalisation of religion and the attacks of
September 11 have made religious claims and religious actors much
more visible in the public sphere. This volume provides multiple
perspectives on the processes through which religious communities
create or defend their place in a given society, both in history
and in our world today. Offering a critical, cross-disciplinary
investigation into processes of negotiating religion and religious
diversity, the contributors present new insights on the meaning and
substance of negotiation itself. This volume draws on diverse
historical, sociological, geographic, legal and political
theoretical approaches to take a close look at the religious and
political agents involved in such processes as well as the
political, social and cultural context in which they take place.
Its focus on the European experiences that have shaped not only the
history of 'negotiating religion' in this region but also around
the world, provides new perspectives for critical inquiries into
the way in which contemporary societies engage with religion. This
study will be of interest to academics, lawyers and scholars in law
and religion, sociology, politics and religious history.
This is the first comparative study of early twentieth-century
French and British schools of political pluralism. A wide-ranging
survey of the works of thinkers such as JN Figgis, GDH Cole, Harold
Laski, Edouard Berth, Maxime Leroy and Leon Duguit, Pluralist
Thought and the State in Britain and France, 1900-25 is a major
contribution both to the study of national tradition of political
thought and to the understanding of relationships between state,
groups and individuals in democratic societies.
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. Cecile 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?
Polarization between political religionists and militant
secularists on both sides of the Atlantic is on the rise.
Critically engaging with traditional secularism and religious
accommodationism, this collection introduces a constitutional
secularism that robustly meets contemporary challenges. It
identifies which connections between religion and the state are
compatible with the liberal, republican, and democratic principles
of constitutional democracy and assesses the success of their
implementation in the birthplace of political secularism: the
United States and Western Europe. Approaching this issue from
philosophical, legal, historical, political, and sociological
perspectives, the contributors wage a thorough defense of their
project's theoretical and institutional legitimacy. Their work
brings fresh insight to debates over the balance of human rights
and religious freedom, the proper definition of a nonestablishment
norm, and the relationship between sovereignty and legal pluralism.
They discuss the genealogy of and tensions involving international
legal rights to religious freedom, religious symbols in public
spaces, religious arguments in public debates, the jurisdiction of
religious authorities in personal law, and the dilemmas of
religious accommodation in national constitutions and public policy
when it violates international human rights agreements or
liberal-democratic principles. If we profoundly rethink the
concepts of religion and secularism, these thinkers argue, a
principled adjudication of competing claims becomes possible.
Polarization between political religionists and militant
secularists on both sides of the Atlantic is on the rise.
Critically engaging with traditional secularism and religious
accommodationism, this collection introduces a constitutional
secularism that robustly meets contemporary challenges. It
identifies which connections between religion and the state are
compatible with the liberal, republican, and democratic principles
of constitutional democracy and assesses the success of their
implementation in the birthplace of political secularism: the
United States and Western Europe. Approaching this issue from
philosophical, legal, historical, political, and sociological
perspectives, the contributors wage a thorough defense of their
project's theoretical and institutional legitimacy. Their work
brings fresh insight to debates over the balance of human rights
and religious freedom, the proper definition of a nonestablishment
norm, and the relationship between sovereignty and legal pluralism.
They discuss the genealogy of and tensions involving international
legal rights to religious freedom, religious symbols in public
spaces, religious arguments in public debates, the jurisdiction of
religious authorities in personal law, and the dilemmas of
religious accommodation in national constitutions and public policy
when it violates international human rights agreements or
liberal-democratic principles. If we profoundly rethink the
concepts of religion and secularism, these thinkers argue, a
principled adjudication of competing claims becomes possible.
The first comprehensive analysis of the philosophical issues raised
by the hijab controversy in France, this book also conducts a
dialogue between contemporary Anglo-American and French political
theory and defends a progressive republican solution to so-called
multicultural conflicts in contemporary societies. It critically
assesses the official republican philosophy of laicite which
purported to justify the 2004 ban on religious signs in schools.
Laicite is shown to encompass a comprehensive theory of republican
citizenship, centered on three ideals: equality (secular neutrality
of the public sphere), liberty (individual autonomy and
emancipation) and fraternity (civic loyalty to the community of
citizens). Challenging official interpretations of laicite, the
book then puts forward a critical republicanism which does not
support the hijab ban, yet upholds a revised interpretation of
three central republican commitments: secularism, non-domination
and civic solidarity. Thus, it articulates a version of secularism
which squarely addresses the problem of status quo bias--the fact
that Western societies are historically not neutral towards all
religions. It also defends a vision of female emancipation which
rejects the coercive paternalism inherent in the regulation of
religious dress, yet does not leave individuals unaided in the face
of religious and secular, patriarchal and ethnocentric domination.
Finally, the book outlines a theory of immigrant integration which
places the burden of civic integration on basic socio-political
institutions, rather than on citizens themselves. Critical
republicanism proposes an entirely new approach to the management
of religious and cultural pluralism, centerd on the pursuit of the
progressive ideal of non-domination in existing, non-ideal
societies.
Oxford Political Theory presents the best new work in contemporary
political theory. It is intended to be broad in scope, including
original contributions to political philosophy, and also work in
applied political theory. The series will contain works of
outstanding quality with no restriction as to approach or subject
matter. Series Editors: Will Kymlicka, David Miller, and Alan Ryan.
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