In his new book, Bryan McGraw presents a twofold normative argument about the place of politically mobilized religious interests in liberal democracy. First, rather than being kept at arm's length, religious interests must be afforded a seat at the political table—assuming they (not unlike any other interest with a seat at the table) are willing and able to employ good table manners. Second, and perhaps more significantly, religious interests add to the quality of liberal democracy; theorists and practitioners alike should welcome them as fellow participants in pluralism.

The mechanics of McGraw's effort are twofold as well. He contributes to normative theory in the conventional way, building upon the theoretical formulations of Robert Audi, Jürgen Habermas, and (especially) John Rawls. In a less conventional twist, he includes four insightful case studies of European religious interests that have, in his estimation, enhanced liberal democracies in the past. This empirical treatment of history bolsters his normative contentions and puts them in the context of real human experiences. The effort is ambitious, with McGraw endeavoring quite intentionally to present a “big-picture” analysis of a question of great contemporary relevance: Do religious interests endanger liberal democracy? Thus, he speaks to the real world of politics while advancing (normative) political science theory. All readers will not necessarily agree with his optimistic conclusions regarding religion and its place in liberal democracy, but even the most pointed critics must acknowledge the massive effort and meticulous scholarship that went into the creation of this work (the footnotes alone are worth the price of admission)—as well as the honest pragmatism he brings to the table.

McGraw explicitly challenges liberal political theorists who, as he argues, have tended to emphasize the risks posed to liberal democracy by politically mobilized religious interests. Their consensus, he asserts, is that liberal democracy depends on the maintenance of a relatively religion-free public square. The author calls upon theorists to reconsider whether religious interests might in fact contribute to the vibrancy and health of democracy—or at the very least, not undermine it at every turn. This is not to say that liberal democracy cannot impose demands on religious interests that wish to participate in democratic deliberation; it is reasonable, he says, to set forth some ground rules regarding what “a liberal political order should reasonably expect of its religious citizens” (p. 11).

Toward this end, he develops a Rawls-inspired “argument for deliberative restraint” (p. 27 and passim) that implies a sort of code of conduct for politically mobilized religious interests. Religious interests serve democracy—and themselves—best when they play by the same rules of the game as nonreligious interests. McGraw builds on Rawls's assertion that religious interests should prioritize secular, public arguments in the political arena, rather than leading with their distinctive faith-based points of view. At root, he does not depart entirely from Rawls, but favors a looser, more practical interpretation of the expectations that liberal democratic theorists should place on religious interests in the political process. In the author's view, “we should accept that free societies are marked by such deep moral and religious distinctiveness [that] whatever attraction the moral ideal of consensus might have for us, it is little more than a pipe dream and one whose claims can work to our own political disadvantage” (p. 175) if the liberal democratic quest for consensus results in the disenfranchisement of religious interests.

Instead of assuming the worst of politically mobilized religious interests, McGraw looks to the historical record to learn what “religious citizens actually do [when they] engage politically in liberal democratic order” (p. 13; emphasis in original). Specifically, he analyzes four episodes when religious “integrationists” made their mark on liberal democracies in Europe, primarily by preserving a voice for religious interests amid advancing secularization. Religious integrationists explicitly are not theocrats; instead, they “accept and are willing to work within established political avenues and eschew the idea that the state should be in the business of securing strictly religious goods” (p. 21).

McGraw's illustrations are drawn from nineteenth-century movements in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Austria; in all four cases, religious interests felt marginalized and responded by creating political subcultures of their own. These subcultures gave rise to institutions (such as political parties) that ultimately contributed to, rather than detracted from, the (temporary or permanent) preservation of democracy in all four countries. The inclusion of these case histories lends McGraw's argument depth and power. Of course, critical readers will (and should) ask about counterexamples, particularly the current challenge of political Islam in democratic societies. The author's contention (which he begins to sketch out on pp. 274–82) would be that there is a profound difference between espousing explicitly theocratic aims (of the sort that an organization such as Al Qaeda might envision) and religious integrationism. The former is revolutionary and, in most cases, incompatible with liberal democracy. The latter, in McGraw's view, is simply a request on the part of citizens who happen to be religious for a seat at the table.

Particularly because of his reliance on Habermas, McGraw's work is also relevant to the ongoing debate over secularization. Social theorists across disciplinary lines have spent decades interrogating the question of whether secularization necessarily accompanies modernity (he offers a brief summary of this debate on pp. 113–17). Many continue to endorse the assertion, first offered variously by Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber, that organized religion will inch its way into the dustbin of history as humanity continues to advance technologically. Others point to recent manifestations of religious resurgence across the globe—and particularly in the non-Western world—as evidence of desecularization. Some scholars, including Habermas and the prominent sociologist Peter Berger, have even reversed their positions on this matter over the course of their careers. McGraw comes down firmly on the side of desecularization, taking inspiration from another sociologist of note, Jose Casanova, and inherently basing most of his argument on the assumption that religion is here to stay as a core component of the human experience: “However much social and political authority religion has lost in modernity, it still has a nearly unparalleled power to inspire and order people's lives, including their collective sense of how to order their politics” (p. 44). Were religion relegated permanently to the dustbin of history, of course, there would be little need to grapple with the proper role of religious interests in politics.

In the final analysis, McGraw shows us that disaster need not ensue every time religious interests insert themselves into politics in liberal democratic polities. Religious interests, like any politically organized factions, can behave in malevolent, benign, or benevolent ways. The specifics are bound up in the cultural and contextual realities of each case of faith-based political mobilization—as well as in the ideological desires and predispositions of the people affected by the actions of the politically mobilized religious interests. Faith in Politics forces readers to grapple with the fact that religious interests often are comprised of people who want nothing other than to contribute to—and improve the quality of—the democratic societies in which they live and work.