Religious Reasons and Public Reason: Recalibrating Ireland’s Benevolent Secularism

Joseph Rivera

doi:10.5539/res.v12n1p75

Abstract

Liberal regimes in the West are not homogeneous in their application of secular principles. What kind of &ldquo;secular&rdquo; state a particular government promotes depends in large part on the strength and influence of the majority religion in that region. This article acknowledges the heuristic value of a recent threefold taxonomy of secularism: passive, assertive, and benevolent forms of secularism. I take issue with and challenge certain institutional privileges granted to the majority religion in one benevolently secular regime, the Republic of Ireland. I consider how benevolent secularism, while remaining benevolent toward religion, can align its application of secularism in the arena of publicly-funded education (primary and secondary education). A politically liberal regime, defined by the idea of public reason, invokes the principle of publicity, namely, that discourse and public policy be intelligible (and acceptable to a large degree) not only to an individual&rsquo;s religious or moral community but also to the broader collection of members who constitute a liberal state. Drawing on John Rawls&rsquo; conception of public reason, and using Ireland as a case study, I show how this particular state-religion interrelation can be recalibrated in order to increase the prospects of reconciliation with a secular space of public reason.

Highlights

Religion, Public Reason, SecularismPublic reason, should it remain truly public, conforms to the logic of diversity, namely, that reasons should assume a form of discourse acceptable to many kinds of worldviews, those typically found in the context of a religiously and morally diverse citizenry
Drawing on John Rawls’ conception of public reason, and using Ireland as a case study, I show how this particular state-religion interrelation can be recalibrated in order to increase the prospects of reconciliation with a secular space of public reason
The citizen’s commitment to liberal democracy requires that religious reason, as a form of speech, be verbalized in a manner that resonates with any other citizen

Summary

Introduction

Should it remain truly public, conforms to the logic of diversity, namely, that reasons should assume a form of discourse acceptable to many kinds of worldviews, those typically found in the context of a religiously and morally diverse citizenry. The delicate balance here belongs to the dialectical performance opened up between both, so that particular faith traditions maintain at once their own integrity as this unique theological language and their capacity to expand their grammatical apparatus by supplementing it with a “wider” use of public concepts, reasons, examples, all in the attempt to cultivate civic ties of communication, perhaps even political friendship and social bonds of affection with others This exchange, wide as it is, need not involve translation of a thick religious vocabulary into a thinned-out, neutral rational language. As I hope to make clear, is neither exclusive of religion nor contained within its own inescapable ideological circularity

Secularization Theory: A Plea for Polysemy

Ireland

The Wide View of Public Culture

Findings

Conclusion