PLURALISM AND FAITHnance on the same strip of territory without significant violence or oppression. It breaks,
however, with classical secularism on the second expectation. That expectation, as I have
already suggested, rests upon a superficial reading of the complex relation between devo-
tional mood, performance, and belief. Once you modify the second condition, it becomes
pertinent to reconstitute the third expectation, as well. To put the point briefly, you trans-
figure the drive to reach a consensus on justice above contending faiths into the effort to
negotiate a positive ethos of engagement between multiple constituencies who bring
chunks and pieces of their faiths with them into the public realm.
It is pertinent to see how the Rawlsian image of secularism also coalesces with the
image of the state assumed in realist and neorealist international relations theory. Accord-
ing to these accounts, the Westphalian accord in early modern Europe recognized the
sovereignty of each European state over its citizens by pushing religious differences into
the private realm. Thus domestic liberal theory and international-relations theory in the
West converge upon the assumption of privatized religion. But, again, if Asad is correct,
Christendom has never been privatized in Euro-American states to the degree publicists
of secularism and the Westphalian accord assume. To pursue a new pluralism appropriate
to the contemporary world is to come to terms, then, with the expansion of religious
diversity inside Western states, the critical role that practice plays in constituting each
religious faith as well as in representing it, the effects the acceleration of speed and inter-
dependence have had on citizen movements to foster multidimensional diversity within
and across states, and the effects all of these process have had on the double minoritization
of many Muslims within Euro-American states.
Here we focus on what it takes to pluralize political culture within Europe and the
United States. Two ingredients are critical. First, there is the extension of thedimensions
ortypesof legitimate diversity within the state. In a culture of multidimensional pluralism,
you not only honor a diversity of faiths and ethnic practices, you also extend diversity
into gender practices, marriage arrangements, linguistic use, sensual affiliations, and
household organization. If and as multidimensional diversity becomes embedded in cor-
porations, schools, the military, and the composition of elected officials,a host of constitu-
encies now acquire more leverage to press their faith communities from within to honor that
variety. The cumulative effect is a healthy politics of creedal ventilation within and be-
tween faiths.^28 Such creedal ventilation uncovers an elasticity of language and governance
already simmering in each creed, particularly when each is considered across a long
stretch of time. The new social movements within faith communities make this element
of elasticity more transparent to the faithful.
More importantly yet, together such movements disperse the mythic assumptions
through which defenders of the religiously centered nation portray the common life. Such
movements disperse the appearance of a national center occupied by one constituency
affirming the same faith, using the same language, displaying the same skin color, con-
forming to the same marriage practices, and/or participating in the same sensual affilia-
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