Chains of Persuasion deploys a distinctive conception of the democratic life of a liberal polity to develop an innovative and wide-ranging framework to evaluate religious politics. Adopting a postsecular approach, Hertzberg rejects both classical liberal demands for the privatization of religion and injunctions by critical theorists of religion against evaluating religion’s interactions with politics. Instead, Hertzberg invites us to reconceptualize both democracy and religion as ways of life, characterized by “central cognitive and value commitments, understandings of the nature and boundaries of their communities, institutional and corporate structures, and practices that inculcate necessary excellences in participants” (p. 12). Given their shared characteristics, Hertzberg argues, democracy as a way of life provides an effective normative framework for evaluating the proper role of religion in liberal democracies. This framework moves beyond preoccupations with religion as belief to assess the degree to which religious communities foster deliberation across community boundaries, support democracy’s instrumental purposes, and encourage the virtues inherent in democratic citizenship.

While public reason—the dominant framework for evaluating the role of religion in a liberal polity—identifies essential criteria to assess the legitimacy of laws and formal political decisions, Hertzberg contends that these criteria are insufficient to address many of the most significant questions surrounding the role of religion in democratic decision making. Although all citizens must accept the liberal principle of legitimacy, the constraints of public reason only directly apply to elected officials and officeholders immediately engaged in shaping public law and policy. For citizens at large, a commitment to public reason merely entails a “requirement to hold their public officials to account to the liberal principle of legitimacy” (p. 57). Moreover, although the demands of public reason imply that “reasonable citizens only affirm religious and moral views that can be made consistent with a political conception of justice” (p. 36), reasonable political conceptions of justice can take many forms ranging from John Finnis’s account of natural law to Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics. Indeed, the liberal principle of legitimacy is compatible with many different religious-political regimes, with widely divergent approaches to controversial religious-political questions, such as abortion, bioethics and religious exemptions. Not only does the narrow focus of public reason on law and legitimacy fail to “interrogate religion’s potential roles in the process by which citizens’ diverse, idiosyncratic inputs into the decision-making process become outputs that are publicly [sic] justified” (p. 63) but it also cannot explain how a particular religious-political regime gains support in a liberal polity. Yet, if such support is the product of “religious difference alone—instead of an information-rich public process of bargaining and deliberation—… the liberal principle of legitimacy, contrary to its widely understood implication, legitimizes a moderate form of religious coercion” (p. 59). To address these concerns, Hertzberg argues, requires a theory of democratic decision making and deliberative legitimacy designed to appraise political advocacy in civil society.

For citizens in pluralist liberal polities to effectively deliberate about how religiously controversial public policy issues are to be resolved and what religious-political regime they should adopt, they must be able to persuade one another across religious divides. Religions, however, are not merely comprehensive doctrines, but constitute epistemic communities characterized by different conceptions of authority and distinctive epistemic standards and traditions. This is liable to give rise to the worry that religious arguments cannot possibly contribute to processes of democratic persuasion and that citizens who view their religious commitments as integral to their identity will not be open to persuasion by fellow citizens who do not share their commitments. Chains of Persuasion shows that such concerns are misplaced. For Hertzberg democratic deliberation is best viewed systemically; that is, as a process across numerous interconnected forums and operating at a variety of levels, including formal institutions, civil society associations, and “conversations in homes and neighborhoods” (p. 76). Moreover, in a liberal democratic polity, freedom of conscience and association not only result in different degrees of affiliation to any one religion—ranging from integralist affiliation, to loose affiliation, to nonaffiliation— but also give rise to a complex network of affiliation relationships with different religious communities, such as “lapsed Catholics, secular Jews, mainline Protestants who were raised in fundamentalist homes, Protestant converts to Islam, etc.” (p. 80). This rich network of affiliation relationships provides the background for chains of persuasion that can cross religious divides. Although, for example, the “integralist Catholic” may not “directly persuade the non-Catholic,” her argument may “directly persuade the loosely affiliated Catholic, who then persuades the non-Catholic” (p. 81). The possibility of such chains of persuasion not only highlights how religious arguments can potentially contribute to democratic opinion and will formation but also offers criteria by which democratic citizens can assess religious political action: religions that permit “a diverse range of value commitments and epistemic standards” (p. 95) or allow for loose affiliation “are more capable of impacting political deliberations in democratically appropriate ways” (p. 88).

Religious politics can also enhance or inhibit democracy’s instrumental functions and the development of virtues essential to democratic citizenship. Although religious politics can contribute to the information base, openness, and diversity of democratic public spheres, especially in cases where religious identities “track other sociologically salient divisions such as class, ethnicity, race or gender” (p. 115), a religious politics that is hierarchical, closed, or dogmatic is liable to undermine the public sphere’s openness and fallibility. This points to a need to be attentive to the wider context of religious politics and the ways in which religious institutions exercise their informational power. Similarly, due regard for the virtues inherent in democratic citizenship, such as reciprocal accountability, draws attention to the manner in which religious political practices shape practitioners in ways that can promote or hinder the development of democratic virtues.

By drawing attention to aspects of religion neglected by dominant frameworks, Hertzberg’s rich account sheds new light on the processes that shape democratic deliberation in religiously diverse liberal polities. However, it is debatable whether Hertzberg’s phenomenological account is sufficiently substantive to safeguard the political autonomy of religious citizens. Arguably, the purpose of public deliberation is to reach a shared understanding of what we as citizens should do. Yet, as arguments progress along a chain of persuasion and are incorporated into diverse epistemic frameworks and traditions, their wider meaning, significance, and implications may be radically transformed. Thus, although even integralist religious citizens may start a chain of persuasion, there is no guarantee that such citizens will be able to endorse the laws and political decisions that ultimately follow for reasons they themselves can recognize as rationally acceptable. Nor can Hertzberg entirely sidestep the demanding epistemic learning processes central to Jürgen Habermas’s account of democratic deliberation. Although Hertzberg’s chains of persuasion may well be less burdensome for citizens than Habermas’s notion of cooperative translation, citizens arguably still need to hold their beliefs in a reflexive and decentered manner if they are to truly embrace the liberal principle of legitimacy. Indeed, while Hertzberg invites us to view Chains of Persuasion as an alternative to Habermas’s framework, Hertzberg’s phenomenological approach arguably offers a persuasive account of how epistemic learning processes may gain momentum in modern liberal polities. And that constitutes an important insight.