The crisis of the secular state--A reply to Professor Sajo

The failure of the European Constitution ignited two apparently independent debates: what is the future of European states on one hand; and what is the place of Christian values in the European public sphere. In recent years, the latter question became more and more burning; so much so that the future of European secular states is considered to be very much dependent on its ability to cope with the alleged threat of religion. This paper distinguishes two competing diagnoses of the same problem and suggests that the only way out for Europe is to be committed to a robust form of secularism that does not exclude religious minorities from the public sphere.