260 religious revolution nowdiscourse. It should be banned from that discourse, whether the criti-
cism is mounted from the standpoint of another religion or in the name
of ideas claiming no religious authority or signifi cance.
Th e taboo against the religious criticism of religion cannot, however,
be accepted. It is unacceptable both to religion, including the religion
of the future, and to democracy, especially to a democracy more real
than the democracies now existing.
Th e taboo against the religious criticism of religion should be intol-
erable to anyone who speaks out of the faith in a dialectic between
transcendence and immanence informing all the major spiritual orien-
tations of the last two thousand years. If the spirit must become fl esh,
and change the world, if to deny such embodiment is to resist spirit,
then it matters decisively how such embodiment of spirit is to be un-
derstood and achieved. To silence the religious criticism of religion
is to take an unwarranted step toward leaving the world to its own
devices.
Th e taboo against the religious criticism of religion is just as clearly,
if less obviously, an off ence to democracy. Th e cause of democracy is
that of the collective creation of the terms of social life, informed by a
vision of our interests and ideals. It is in religion that our vision of who
we are and of what we can hope for is most powerfully represented and
developed. To deny a public voice to religion is grievously to weaken
the contest of visions on which the progress of democracy depends. To
give a public voice to religion, however, is to admit the religious criti-
cism of religion as part of the practice of public reason: no religion can
develop its view of how we should arrange our dealings with one another
in society without defending its understanding of our vocation and hu-
manity against other views. As a result, it enters into confl ict with rival
religions.
Th e prohibition of the religious criticism of religion wins unwar-
ranted philosophical support from the idea, characteristic of liberal
po liti cal philosophy, that the institutions of society should be neutral
among confl icting visions of the good and thus, as well, among oppos-
ing religious outlooks. No ordering of social life can achieve such neu-
trality; each one encourages certain forms of experience and discour-
ages others. Th e illusory ideal of neutrality stands in the place of the
related, but distinct, ideal of corrigibility: that a form of social life be