Document Type

Working Paper

Publication Date

1-6-2011

SSRN Discipline

Legal Scholarship Network; PSN Subject Matter eJournals; *Humanities - Forthcoming Areas; Political Theory eJournals; Religious Studies Research Network; Law School Research Papers - Legal Studies; REL Subject Matter eJournals; LSN Subject Matter eJournals; Law School Research Papers - Public Law & Legal Theory; Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence & Legal Philosophy eJournals; Humanities Network; Political Science Network

Abstract

This is the introductory chapter of my forthcoming book The Agnostic Age Law Religion and the Constitution Oxford University Press 2011 The book argues in short that questions of churchstate conflict and more broadly of the relationship between religion and liberal democracy are inseparable from questions of religious truth and that the effort to avoid these very questions has led to much of the common dissatisfaction with the theory and doctrine of law and religion I argue for an approach to the question of law and religion that I call constitutional agnosticism one that owes a good deal to a particular brand of agnosticism that is especially wellsuited to what Charles Taylor has called our secular age and I call our agnostic age I use this approach to examine reform and hopefully provide a stronger justification for the approach of judges public officials and citizens to the vexing questions of churchstate relations but I also argue that even this approach cannot fully reconcile the tensions that are inherent in the relationship between religion and liberal democracy and that the best we can hope for may be a more candid and thoughtful accounting of the interests on both sides The introduction sets out the basic argument of the book and provides a roadmap to the ensuing discussion

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