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April 24, 2007
In his review of two books on the entry of religious reason into the political realm in liberal democracy in Borderlands, Brian Goldstone says that principle task of Jeffrey Stout's Democracy and Tradition is to reconsider the terms of interaction between religion and democracy. Goldstone says that:
Stout summarizes in the query "What role, if any, should religious premises play in the reasoning citizens engage in when they make and defend political decisions" (p.63)? In answering this question, Stout seeks to counter the depiction - promulgated mostly by the aforementioned new traditionalists - that democratic culture remains inherently bereft of moral and spiritual virtues. Moreover, he challenges the assumption that democracy depends on the establishment of political deliberation on the common ground of free public reason, independent of comprehensive doctrines or tradition.
In other words, he argues against the idea that democracy is somehow intrinsically inhospitable to substantive religious reasoning. As we have seen in the previous post Stout argues that democracy is itself a tradition, and so" Rawlsian liberalism should not be seen as its official mouthpiece.
Stout's understanding of democratic culture entails neither the denial of theological assumptions nor the expulsion of theological expression from the public sphere. These attributes Stout argues correspond to the quite particular ideology of "secularism" put forth by political liberalism.
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