Strong Inclusionist Accounts of the Role of Religion in Political Decision‐Making

In recent years, discussions about the role of religion in political decisionmaking seem to have become more heated but less polarized. Few contributors to these discussions endorse the positions that (1) religious discourse and argument should play no role in political decision-making or (2) citizens and officials have no reason to seek nonsectarian political justifications that are suitably addressed to others as fellow citizens. Leading voices in debates about the role of religion in political decision-making are generally united in calling for some form of inclusionism. Intense disagreement now centers mainly on questions about the extent to which religious discourse and argument should be included in political decision-making. With respect to the role of religion in politics, we might say that the main question is, “What is the proper mean between extremes?” According to philosophers such as John Rawls and Robert Audi, religious discourse and argument would supplement the public (Rawls) or secular (Audi) reasoning that primarily constitutes the political justifications that citizens endorse and present to one another. But an approach that is even more inclusive of religion has recently emerged as a challenger to these familiar positions. An essential feature of what I call strong inclusionism is its distinction between seeking a political justification and exercising restraint in the appeal to religious beliefs in political decision-making. The strong inclusionist acknowledges that citizens are obligated, or at least strongly encouraged, to seek suitable political justifications that are addressed to others; citizens are not, however, discouraged from basing their political decisions or arguments solely on religious grounds. Strong inclusionism thus rejects the notion that citizens are sometimes required, just in virtue of the obligations and excellences of liberal-democratic citizenship, to restrain their appeal to religious beliefs in their political decision-making. In this essay, I address the question of an obligation to exercise restraint only indirectly. My own view is that the Rawlsian account of “public reason” is the right one, provided that it is interpreted as widely as possible, so as to acknowledge the many positive religious contributions to public political debate and decision-making. To be sure, given the numerous criticisms of Rawls on this score, an argument demonstrating that there is indeed a moral obligation sometimes to exercise restraint would be a necessary element in a complete defense of an idea of public reason. But in this essay I shall take a different tack, focusing instead