Beyond the conflict: religion in the public sphere and deliberative democracy

Abstract

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 ethos