Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith

Religious Accommodation in Pluralist Democracies

Nancy L. Rosenblum

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780691007083
  9780691007076
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691228242
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Of the many challenges facing liberal democracy, none is as powerful and pervasive today as those posed by religion. These are the challenges taken up in Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith, an exploration of the place of religion in contemporary public life.


The essays in this volume suggest that two important shifts have altered the balance between the competing obligations of citizenship and faith: the growth of religious pluralism and the escalating calls of religious groups for some measure of autonomy or recognition from democratic majorities. The authors--political theorists, philosophers, legal scholars, and social scientists--collectively argue that more room should be made for religion in today's democratic societies. Though they advocate different ways of carving out and justifying the proper bounds of "church and state" in pluralist democracies, they all write from within democratic theory and share the aim of democratic accommodation of religion. Alert to national differences in political circumstances and the particularities of constitutional and legal systems, these contributors consider the question of religious accommodation from the standpoint of institutional practices and law as well as that of normative theory.


Unique in its interdisciplinary approach and comparative focus, this volume makes a timely and much-needed intervention in current debates about religion and politics. The contributors are Nancy L. Rosenblum, Alan Wolfe, Ronald Thiemann, Michael McConnell, Graham Walker, Amy Gutmann, Kent Greenawalt, Aviam Soifer, Harry Hirsch, Gary Jacobsohn, Yael Tamir, Martha Nussbaum, and Carol Weisbrod.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Pluralism, Integralism, and Political Theories of Religious Accommodation
• One: Civil Religion Revisited: Quiet Faith in Middle-Class America
• Two: Public Religion: Bane or Blessing for Democracy?
• Three: Believers as Equal Citizens
• Four: Illusory Pluralism, Inexorable Establishment
• Five: Religion and State in the United States: A Defense of Two-Way Protection
• Six: Amos: Religious Autonomy and the Moral Uses of Pluralism
• Seven: Five Questions about Religion Judges Are Afraid to Ask
• Eight: The Fullness of Time
• Nine: Let Them Eat Incidentals: RFRA, the Rehnquist Court, and Freedom of Religion
• Ten: “By the Light of Reason”: Corruption, Religious Speech, and Constitutional Essentials
• Eleven: Remember Amalek: Religious Hate Speech
• Twelve: Religion and Women’s Equality: The Case of India
• Thirteen: Women and International Human Rights: Some Issues under the Bridge
• List of Contributors
• Index