Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West, _The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere_

THE PAPERS HEREIN were presented at a symposium sponsored by New York University, the School for Social Research, and Stony Brook University about ten years ago, in October of 2009. The question addressed, to use the formulation from R. J. Neuhaus that Craig Calhoun quotes in his afterword, is whether religion has a role in the public sphere if "public decisions must be made by arguments that are public in character." If religion draws its arguments from revelation, or tradition, or a specific kind of communal practice, do those arguments have a place at the table in our public square, so to speak?

This is a question, I think, mainly for those coming from the political left and assuming that progress aligns with modernization, and modernization in turn aligns with secularization. If one is coming from the political right, the question may not even arise. Should we do what God requires? Absolutely! Do we know what God requires? It's right there in Scripture! And so on. The conveners of the symposium seem to be looking for ways to include religion in the conversation while still holding on to assumptions about progress, justice, equality, freedom and other such goals of liberalism.

Habermas is ready to include religious perspectives on public questions, provided they can be translated into our shared discourse; Taylor is even more welcoming, and seems to think our public discourse would be impoverished by excluding religious perspectives. Butler thinks pulling in more currents from Jewish history and teaching (the prophetic tradition, perhaps, or wisdom gained as a dispersed people) would improve the discourse surrounding Palestine and the Palestinians. West just flat out prophesies.

A thought-provoking book. Seems of its moment, in a way--those early Obama days, when one could be more hopeful that religion (or spirituality, let's say) and social progress could be partners. Right at this particular 2019 moment, when "religious freedom" has become the catch-cry of those seeking to drive the LGBTQ folks back into the closet or worse and Netanyahu has been re-elected, all four seem optimistic. But it's a welcome reminder that things do not always look the way they do at the moment.