Religious Commitment and Secular Reason

by Robert Audi

Overview

Many religious people are alarmed about features of the current age—violence in the media, a pervasive hedonism, a marginalization of religion, and widespread abortion. These concerns influence politics, but just as there should be a separation between church and state, so should there be a balance between religious commitments and secular arguments calling for social reforms. Robert Audi offers a principle of secular rationale, which does not exclude religious grounds for action but which rules out restricting freedom except on grounds that any rational citizen would accept. This book describes the essential commitments of free democracy, explains how religious and secular moral considerations can be integrated to facilitate cooperation in a world of religious pluralism, and proposes ideals of civic virtue that express the mutual respect on which democracy depends.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521775700
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/13/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	662,978
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.06(h) x 0.79(d)

Table of Contents

Part I. The Foundations of Democracy and the Separation of Church and State: 1. The plurality of paths to Liberal democracy; 2. The separation of church and State; 3. Church-State separation and the justification of Governmental power; Part II. The Ethics of Citizenship and the Balance of Religious and Political Arguments: 4. Religious convictions and secular reasons; 5. Religion and ethics: toward integration; Part III. Civic Virtue and Political Activism in a Religiously Pluralistic Democracy: 6. Civic virtue; 7. Religious conviction and political activism; 8. Conclusion: ethics, reason, and democracy.

Editorial Reviews

"Helpful and thorough...provocative..." Journal of International Migration and Integration

"Audi's account of church-state separation, joined with an attempted integration of religious commitment and secular morality, is among the best of the current descriptions of the place of religious convictions within pluralistic democracies." Religious Studies Review

"This is one of the best books on religion and politics in current literature." Philosophia Christi, Brendan Sweetman, Rockhurst University

From the Publisher