Can religious citizens live cooperatively and justly with others in a pluralistic polity? Can religious arguments play a role within healthy democratic deliberation?

In this volume, Paul Billingham and Marilie Coetsee debate these timely issues, examining what responsible democratic citizenship requires of the religiously committed. Billingham argues that a religious citizen doesn't need to check or undermine her deepest beliefs in order to engage in the political life of a pluralistic society, and rebuts familiar worries about religious political arguments being dogmatic, domineering, and incomprehensible and unpersuasive to non-believers. Furthermore, he draws on real-life examples to argue that religious contributions to democratic deliberation can be beneficial, ultimately strengthening discourse, pluralism, and democracy. Coetsee is much more skeptical. She argues that a pluralistic democracy requires a "strong integrationist" commitment from all citizens, a commitment that poses strong challenges to the religiously devout and to the cohesion of religious communities. Such integrationist commitments, according to Coetsee, include being active in non-religious civic associations and advancing non-religious reasons for laws that those outside their faith will accept.

The two authors then take turns responding to each other.

Paul Billingham is Associate Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Magdalen College. His research interests include public reason liberalism, the place of religion in politics, religious freedom, and the ethics of public shaming. He has published numerous articles on these topics in a wide range of journals of moral, legal, and political philosophy.

Marilie Coetsee is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Hope College. Her research focuses on religion and democratic citizenship, the epistemology of disagreement, and liberal governments' obligations to illiberal citizens. She has published in a range of journals on philosophy of religion and political philosophy.