The relationship between religion and public life is a universal problem, but discussions of it quickly become very local. They begin with the global reality of religious diversity, then the analysis descends into the particulars of the legal and constitutional system immediately in view, assuming always the sociological features of religious diversity most familiar to the audience at hand. French analysts typically take laïcité as the standard for modern solutions to the problem, while they view with alarm the cultural gap which separates older French citizens from recent Muslim immigrants. American writers, by contrast, usually have a more benign view of cultural diversity, which has grown up over generations of immigration. They turn quickly to the ambiguities of church–state law which govern religious expression in public space. Roger Trigg provides a thoughtful alternative to these parochial analyses. His Religion in Public Life explores a variety of national settings and he formulates his questions in terms which avoid legal or religious assumptions that are already in place where the question is asked. At the same time, he makes no premature claims to rational universality or global solutions. Religion in Public Life is primarily an investigation of European and North American contexts, or in other places which share a British legal and cultural heritage. In these places, religion and public life are shaped by the realities of modern law and the modern state and appeals to reason still mean something, even if they cannot mean quite as much as liberal theorists thought they meant only a few decades ago. But even among these nations, linked by culture, commerce and commitment to democracy, there is a surprising range of legal arrangements relating to religious expression and religious institutions and there are considerable differences in the social facts behind the legal differences. This, Trigg suggests, is a large enough world to allow us to discuss real differences without succumbing to the confusion which sometimes results from too much information. It is also a world in which we are acutely aware that public life has problems in need of solutions. Instead of hurrying to keep religion out of sight or under control, we are perhaps more willing to see what it has to contribute.

Paradoxically, the difficulties religion poses for public life begin when modern society starts to treat religion in individual terms, as a personal choice. The difficulties multiply when religion becomes an individual right. At that point, one's religious beliefs are protected by law, like one's rights to privacy and property, but the implication is that other people have no legitimate interest in what those beliefs happen to be. Government, especially, may take no cognisance of them and even fellow citizens may deserve protection from religious observances which spill over out of private beliefs and begin to intrude on public space. These constraints are most apparent in officially secular systems in France or Turkey, for example, where distinctions in dress or action which call attention to religious identity are suspect, even forbidden, in public settings, including schools and government offices.

Trigg argues, however, that this logic of individualisation and privatisation increasingly dominates legal thinking in most Western democracies. The European Court on Human Rights insists that the extension of religious freedom in former Communist states requires governmental neutrality between religious groups and between belief and unbelief.Footnote ² The privatisation of religion is even more apparent in nations like Canada or the United Kingdom, where a long and uninterrupted tradition of Christian support for democratic government now begins to yield to a legal order based on governmental neutrality and religious individualism.

The paradox in this sort of legal protection of human rights is that values which originate in Christian theology are now used to limit public recognition of religious beliefs.

Trigg's point is not to question the commitment to human rights, but to ask whether human dignity and the sacred worth of the person can be sustained apart from these religious roots, even by a well-meaning legal system which replaces public religious expressions with a rigorously secular protection of individual rights. The tendency among secular defenders of human rights, of course, is to see the problems which religion can create. They focus on gender distinctions in religious practice which may limit the roles available to women, or on religious understandings of family life which limit individual freedom of choice. People have religious freedom, so the secular argument goes, to believe as they choose, but law and government must rest on rights, not faith. Private beliefs may not be limited, but they must yield whenever they come into conflict with a neutral, public system of law.

Religious believers are rarely satisfied with this privatised version of religious freedom. Activists tend to bring court cases which reassert their rights to wear religious attire or to observe religious rituals in public places. In Religion in Public Life, however, the emphasis is less on public expression than it is on public reason. Trigg's concern is that the emphasis on individual rights and private beliefs masks a relativism which denies that there are any moral reasons for action which could be shared in public settings. If no such reasons exist, then religious traditions cannot be the bearers of them. If, from a public point of view, all religious reasons are irrational, then religious freedom will require protecting them equally from questions by the authorities, since it is apparent that none of them will be in a position to offer reasonable answers. But it will also require preventing these religious views from having any real effects in public life, since none of them is in a position to justify its public claims.

Trigg thus rejects the individualist, secular neutrality which increasingly restricts religion to private life in the European Union, Canada and Australia.Footnote ⁴ He is no happier, however, with the affirmation of multiculturalism which currently dominates the discussion in the United States.Footnote ⁵ Multiculturalism initially seems an attractive alternative to the individualism which reduces all religions to privately held beliefs. It is more realistic in acknowledging the cultural dimension which always shapes people's beliefs and values, even when they reject the ones into which they were born. Even those who reject religion initially reject a specific religion, not some abstract religion-in-general: ‘The God [Nietzsche] regarded as dead was the Christian God’.Footnote ⁶

It might seem, then, that in a diverse society these cultural identities, with their generally strong religious components, should be regarded as the basic social units. Law and policy would then be devoted to allowing them to flourish in all their variety. Provisions would have to be made for those who found themselves caught between cultures, by accidents of birth or changes in personal status and individual freedom, to reject these affiliations and would have to be better protected than it has been in some traditional societies, but multiculturalism might be the solution for large, diverse nations like the United States or Russia. Clearly, the Soviet attempt to create a unified secular culture around a political ideology failed. Perhaps a long, slow evolution toward cultural diversity like the American experience holds the key to the future Russia, for the rest of Europe and for Canada and Australia, too.

The sociological observations of multiculturalism may be more realistic, but according to Trigg, normative multiculturalism has the same problem as the privatisation of religion. Multiculturalism, no less than the individualism of religious freedom, implies relativism. The elements of existing cultural and religious systems are to be protected from outside interference and governmental entanglement, but moral judgement cannot move across these boundaries in either direction. ‘There is an implicit relativism in this, because it tends to stress that different groups occupy different compartments, each with their own standards’.Footnote ⁷

It is in relation to those two relativisms, individual and multicultural, that the dimensions of the problem Professor Trigg has set for himself become clear. He is not seeking a political or jurisprudential strategy for dealing with religious diversity in a democratic society. He wants a non-relativist account of liberal democracy that at least admits religious ideas into public discourse, if it does not in fact require them for the justification of key democratic principles. Democracy, Trigg writes,

It is also at this point that the major limitation of Religion in Public Life becomes apparent. It is most effective as a negative argument against the privatisation of religious belief. It provides considerably less in the way of a theoretical account of how this non-relativist discussion of the common good is possible and what its presuppositions are. That would be a substantial undertaking, of course, and it is probably beyond reasonable expectation of a book which begins as a critique of prevailing legal and cultural ideas about religious diversity, but Professor Trigg does not give us a very clear idea of where he locates himself among the available theoretical options. Familiar figures are discussed, especially Rawls, Rorty and Habermas, but the conclusion seems to be that none of their theories adequately accounts for the presuppositions of the secular, public, democratic discourse they seek to advance.Footnote ⁹

In some respects, this theoretical weakness in the book is a mirror image of its descriptive strength. Trigg offers us a rich picture of the different ways in which modern democracies deal with religious diversity and he traces that variety to its historical roots. Theories about public reason, he argues, often determine political arrangements more restrictively than actual democratic practice.Footnote ¹⁰ There is much to be said for attending to practice in this way, but Trigg's criticism of all the available theories runs a risk of falling inadvertently into the kind of relativism that he has already rejected. Our practice of democracy rests on a complex tradition which interweaves religious and political arguments in distinctive ways. This is the kind of democracy we happen to have. We may criticise theories which fail to account for aspects of that democracy, but is that an argument for it? Or is it simply an assertion that we prefer the democracy that we have and we will not settle for any merely theoretical alternative to it?

A theorist critical of Religion in Public Life might argue that Trigg has, in fact, implicitly adopted a version of the pragmatic relativism which marks Richard Rorty's defence of liberal democracy. Democracy is simply the conversation in which we happen to be engaged though, of course, Roger Trigg's account of that conversation would be quite different from Rorty's.Footnote ¹¹ However, I think that a more considered political theory does lie behind Trigg's exploration of the possibilities for public consideration of the common good, although he does not develop it explicitly in the discussions of law and religion, religion and state education and the relationships between church and state which round out the chapter topics in Religion and Public Life. At the theoretical level, the book is not so much an argument against the privatisation of religion as it is an argument against a certain sort of restrictive understanding of politics which is common in liberal democracy.

To use terms borrowed from political theorist William Galston, Religion in Public Life argues for a political theory which is ‘comprehensive’, rather than ‘freestanding’.Footnote ¹² Comprehensive theories draw their political principles from an understanding of the human good which relates the requirements of political order to a more general account of the nature and purpose of human life. Such accounts need not be religious but they frequently are and, in a comprehensive political theory, the use of religious ideas to explain why we take a certain view of our political relationships is acceptable and, for persons who have religious convictions, perhaps unavoidable. In a ‘freestanding’ theory, by contrast, political principles must be provided by the political theory itself. The relationships in which we stand to other persons in a liberal democracy are supposed to be determined by the rational requirements of the democratic system. To accept the system is to consent to the principles, which are the necessary and sufficient reasons for the freedoms democracy gives us and the constraints which it imposes on us. Other principles may be privately held, but they are extraneous to politics and they are properly excluded from arguments about how public life should be conducted.

The paradigm example of a ‘freestanding’ political theory is usually taken to be John Rawls's argument in A Theory of Justice.Footnote ¹³ In that theoretical construct, prospective members of a hypothetical political community choose their political principles without knowing what their complete understanding of the human good might be. The aim of the thought experiment is to identify political principles which are neutral with respect to different views of morality and religion, so that participants in a liberal democracy may be assured that their own religious and moral views will be respected and that no one else's views will be imposed on them.

Trigg rejects this strong version of freestanding political theory, arguing that neutrality alone leaves politics operating in a ‘moral vacuum’.Footnote ¹⁴ He argues the theoretical point only briefly against Rawls,Footnote ¹⁵ but he is helped along by the fact that few theorists any longer argue that political principles can be ‘freestanding’ in this strong sense. We cannot lift politics by its own moral bootstraps, relying only on principles which are logically required by the political system itself. What we can hope for is rather that political principles formulated to be liberal and inclusive will elicit consent from persons who hold a wide range of ideas about human good, including those who hold a variety of religious beliefs. If persons can agree to the necessary political principles for their own reasons, government can then proceed on the basis of those principles. The system is ‘freestanding’, not in the sense that it does not rest on underlying moral and religious beliefs, but in the sense that recourse to those beliefs is unnecessary for settling practical political questions. Rawls himself, in his later works, presented a version of political liberalism which relied more heavily on this ‘overlapping consensus’ among ideas of the good and less on a strictly rational derivation of the basic political principles.Footnote ¹⁶

The difference between ‘freestanding’ and ‘comprehensive’ political theories, then, is not an absolute division between theories which acknowledge the political relevance of moral and religious ideas and those which do not. It is more a spectrum that runs from those (relatively freestanding) theories which try to operate strictly within the overlapping consensus and maintain neutrality between competing ideas of the good to those (more comprehensive) theories which have recourse to moral and religious ideas to clarify and criticise the requirements of liberal democracy. Militant political ideologies which reject all other systems of belief are ruled out, as are theocratic regimes which determine all political questions by religious doctrine, but that leaves a rather wide range of possibilities for liberal democracy between these totalitarian extremes. Trigg has given us much evidence that the democracies in which we live in Europe and North America are, in practice, closer to the comprehensive end of the spectrum. But are there reasons to choose this sort of democracy against the relatively freestanding models offered by Rawls and Rorty? Trigg's claim is that democracy did not arrive at its commitments to freedom, human dignity and equality by maintaining neutrality between competing religious ideas. ‘It may be unsettling’, he writes, for proponents of liberal democracy ‘to reflect that some of its roots may have been nourished by Christianity. If that is so, it was religious commitment, not religious neutrality on the part of nations, which produced a framework in which all can be free’.Footnote ¹⁷ Let us grant that debatable historical point, the proponents of freestanding theory might reply. With that framework in place, are there reasons now why we should not choose neutrality between competing religious and moral doctrines? Granting for the moment that religious beliefs have had an important influence on the political principles which we all accept, why should not religion now be ‘privatised’, as a way of avoiding what seems to be a serious threat of religious conflict in the future?

Those who reject the privatisation of religion must answer this normative question to complete their description of the relationship between religion and democracy. To be sure, the descriptive work contributes in an important way to framing the normative answer. Once it is clear that there is no theoretical account of liberal democracy which is both rationally compelling and morally complete – no democratic theory which is ‘freestanding’ in the strong sense of the term – attention shifts to the relationship between ideas of the good and political principles.Footnote ¹⁸ Is this relationship a matter of historical interest only, or do those more moral and religious understandings have an active role in maintaining the ‘overlapping consensus’? Is the legitimacy of liberal democracy, once established, self-sustaining, or does it depend in important ways on an ongoing demonstration that this way of organising political life serves the human good?Footnote ¹⁹

Broadly speaking, two answers to these questions have been suggested by comprehensive political theories. We may call the first of these the ‘crisis’ model. Ordinary politics can proceed for long periods of time on the basis of agreed political principles, without recourse to potentially controversial moral and religious ideas. This can create the impression that the political principles are indeed ‘freestanding’, but that is, as William Galston says, ‘an illusion, quickly dispelled in times of internal or external crisis’.Footnote ²⁰ The American Civil War and the end of slavery, or the Second World War and the ensuing Universal Declaration of Human Rights are examples of such crises. They are momentous and, one hopes, rare; but when the meaning of equality or the rule of law is called into question in a radical way, people take recourse to their ideas of the human good to redefine their political principles and to provide legitimacy for the new understandings which emerge. Those ideas include religious beliefs and the religious beliefs may prove to be the most important in particular situations. Religion cannot be privatised because in times of crisis there may be nothing else on which to draw which provides direction for a new political consensus.

Another reason why religion cannot be privatised is suggested by Roger Trigg's work. We may call it the ‘continuous interaction’ model. On this view, the sheer variety of democratic political arrangements suggests that the consensus on political principles is not as stable, determinate and universal as the proponents of relatively freestanding theories claim, nor even as the crisis model is willing to suppose. ‘Overlapping consensus’ is not an achievement which continues in place indefinitely, or perhaps until it is interrupted by some crisis. It is the result of continuous conversation. In a democracy, we are at all times both doing ordinary politics according to the prevailing rules and asking ourselves whether the rules we have actually serve the good as we understand it. It is important not to get those two discussions confused, but it is also important not to think that they can be isolated from one another, one ‘public’ and the other ‘private’.

Different ideas of the good will create their own accounts of what the content of political principles should be and why they should take that form. In a world of religious diversity, the legitimacy of democracy does not depend on neutrality toward those religious ideas, but on openness to religious participation. If religious people and religious groups need a reason to participate in politics, it will not be the individualistic assurance that they will not be disturbed in the privacy of religious beliefs, but an expectation that they will be heard in ‘a common public space, in which rational discussion can take place. Different religions can be respected because they should all be contributing to discussions of the nature of the common good’.Footnote ²¹

In that ongoing discussion, the political principles in use will reflect the distinctive beliefs of the religions which have actually been a part of a specific political history. That political consensus will be changed as new religious voices participate, but in this conversation religious claims will be evaluated, as well as heard. ‘Religions are no longer kept in self-contained compartments. Reasoning about religion is not simply the imposition of one way of life on another. Instead, as inhabitants of one, common world, facing similar problems, we can discuss issues about truth without making artificial distinctions between religion and other kinds of truth.’Footnote ²² The results, on the whole, will tend to continuity rather than crisis. Crisis is rather the likely result of a neutrality which regards questions of truth and rationality as irrelevant to religion. If our politics adopt that view, we will neither understand the political principles which we now have nor recognise the available resources to adapt them to new conditions.

Professor Trigg has an eye for the variety and complexity of the relationships, historical and contemporary, between religious values and democratic principles. From his perspective, differences in religious belief need not result in irreconcilable conflict, nor should variations in democratic practice which follow from differing religious traditions be regarded as evidence of injustice or inconsistency. The privatisation of religion is a solution to problems which begin in inadequate democratic theory, not in political and religious reality. Religion in Public Life identifies the relevant realities and points us in the direction of a better theory.