RELIGION, DEMOCRACY, AND CITIZENSHIPliberty and equality for all that a regime of toleration is necessary and that the state should
not be permitted to favor one religion over another. Those who do not share those values
will of course claim that this is ‘‘liberal fundamentalism,’’ and they will see the institutions
of liberal constitutionalism as a form of violence imposed upon them. This is, I think,
unavoidable, and it is not by declaring that their opponents are ‘‘unreasonable’’ that
liberals will ever solve the problem. Antagonism is indeed ineradicable.
The separation between church and state is, in my view, one of the central tenets of liberal
democracy envisaged as a new ‘‘regime’’—which does not mean that it is fully realized in
existing liberal democracies. Nevertheless, we need to scrutinize what this implies. I want
to argue that, contrary to some interpretations, it does not require that religion should be
relegated to the private sphere and that religious symbols should be excluded from the
public sphere. As Michael Walzer has argued, for instance, what is really at stake in the
separation between church and state is the separation between religion andstate power.
This implies that the state must have the monopoly on legitimate violence and that reli-
gious associations should not be given any control over coercive power.
To speak of the separation between church and state, therefore, is one thing; another
is to speak of the separation between religion and politics; and still another is to speak of
the separation between the public and the private. The problem lies in the fact that those
three types of separation are sometimes presented as in some way equivalent and requir-
ing each other. In consequence, the separation between church and state is seen as imply-
ing the exclusion of all forms of religious expression from the public sphere.
It is, I submit, the tendency to identify politics with the state and the state with the
public that has led to the mistaken idea that the separation between church and state
means the absolute relegation of religion to the private. I do not think that such a view
can be defended. As long as they act within constitutional limits, there is no reason why
religious groups should not be able to intervene in the political arena to argue in favor of
or against certain causes. Indeed, many democratic struggles have been informed by reli-
gious motives. And the fight for social justice has often been enhanced by the participation
of religious groups.
Since it does not postulate that comprehensive views should be excluded from the public
sphere, the agonistic approach makes room for religious believers in the political realm
in a way that is not open to other models. To believe that the field of politics should be
envisaged in terms of ‘‘interests,’’ as in the aggregative model of interest-group pluralism,
or of ‘‘reason’’ and ‘‘morality,’’ as in the deliberative model, is to miss the crucial role
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