On October 22, 2009, New York University's Institute for Public Knowledge, the Social Science Research Council, and Stony Brook University co-sponsored a set of public lectures at the Great Hall of New York City's Cooper Union. These lectures were given by some of the most preeminent social philosophers of our day—Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Judith Butler, and Cornel West. The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere contains these lectures, as well as edited transcripts of subsequent dialogues between the speakers. The lectures and dialogues are framed by a succinct and sharp introduction by the editors and a powerful historical-critical afterword by Craig Calhoun. The event was sparked by the recent and growing tide of scholarly reevaluations of the relationship between religion and secularism. In divergent and overlapping ways, the four participants reconsider this relationship while addressing the roles religion might play in the public sphere.

It is fitting that the first essay in the collection is by Habermas. After all, Habermas's 1962 The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is a pivotal foundational text for contemporary scholarly examinations of the public realm as something separate from the state. As many critics have noted, Habermas, like many liberal thinkers of the time, failed to consider in any depth the roles religion plays in the public sphere. In his more recent work, Habermas has attempted to rectify this problem. His essay in this volume is a further extension of this project.

Habermas begins by rejecting the recent return to public religion through political philosopher Carl Schmitt's concept of the “the political.” Habermas argues that Schmitt's work not only rests on fascist foundations in light of his connections to Nazism, but also fails to adequately recognize the full history of the relationship between politics and religion in the West (19–23). For ancient empires, the power of the state was upheld by religious networks (17–18). As part of the advent of modernity, Habermas claims, several developments eroded this link between religion and politics—from nominalism to religious pluralism. With the loss of metaphysical grounding, the modern public sphere emerged as a sector in which citizens could use public reason to arbitrate differences. Habermas argues that an essential part of this history is that citizens cannot invoke religious reasons alone to justify their opinions in the public sphere. Furthermore, in the realm of law, government bodies avoid using religious language or reasons in order to ensure that everyone can understand the state's deliberated rationale. However, Habermas claims that religious narratives can be a deep well of moral insight for the public sphere once religious and nonreligious citizens alike translate that insight into the language of public reason (25–26).

Crafting his essay as a specific response to these recent developments in Habermas's work, Taylor addresses many of the same topics, though he reaches a fundamentally different conclusion. Building on the foundation of his famous work A Secular Age,Footnote ¹ Taylor begins his essay by rejecting the common notion that the secular can be reduced to a single, simple formula that can be implemented regardless of context. As an example, in the most explicitly legal discussion in the book, Taylor argues that abstract legal formulas, such as the twofold structure of the religion clauses in the US First Amendment, have inherent tensions, which illustrate that “there is no such set of timeless principles that can be determined . . . by pure reason alone” without internal conflicts (35, 40–41). Instead, an examination of the concept of the secular reveals that it is a hybrid of many different goals, which Taylor—cleverly invoking the famous language from the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen—refers to as “liberty, equality, fraternity” (34–35). Contrary to popular modern myths, these goals can often conflict and resist any process of reduction. By considering recent scandals over the hijab in education in Europe as a test case, he argues that this matrix better maps the intersectionality of religion and secularism in the public sphere. Most importantly, however, Taylor claims that his “liberty, equality, fraternity” model of secularism reveals that there are ultimately no good reasons for treating religion as a special case in the public sphere. Disagreeing with Habermas, he argues that there is no essential difference between religious opinions and seemingly secular opinions (such as utilitarianism), as disagreements over any of these opinions can never be fully resolved by appeal to public reason (37).Footnote ² Instead, precisely because of the secular values of liberty, equality, and fraternity of all citizens, Taylor concludes that religions must not be treated differently from other worldviews.

In her essay, Butler responds to claims that criticism of the State of Israel is necessarily anti-Semitic. Drawing on Jewish reflections on dispossession and diaspora, Butler proposes instead that “the public criticism of state violence . . . is in some sense a Jewish thing to do” (73). As is common in her work, Butler weaves complex philosophical concepts into her very practical reflection on justice, Israel, and Palestine. In particular, Butler argues that since individual subjectivities emerge out of language and community, the notions of absolute individual autonomy and the possibility of fully choosing one's cohabitants are total illusions. According to Butler, these perpetuated fictions maintain the unjust invisibility of cohabitants whom we wish to erase, such as the Palestinians (83–84). The inextricably linked modern concepts of religion and secularism have played at least two roles in the public sphere: first, enhancing the visibility of some religions and forms of life by placing others under a shroud of concealment, and second, serving as the prophetic (Jewish and non-Jewish) call to critique that same cloak.

While Butler grounds her reflections in the Israel-Palestine context, she wisely resists any attempt to confine her insights to this domain. After all, Butler is the one who pushes most heavily in this volume against particular Christian hegemonic assumptions about secularism and the public sphere that, within the United States, often go unchecked—such assumptions include the idea that secularism means the total absence of religion, rather than the sharpened visibility of some kinds of religions over others (70–72). One of the limitations of The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere is that the contributors do not take to heart either Butler's argument in this regard or Taylor's related reminders. Habermas, in particular, presents a rather confined and essentialized portrait of Western history and effectively equates the Abrahamic traditions with religion as a whole. Butler opens the door to the question: How might our perspective on religion in the public sphere shift if we were to focus on the more socially invisible religions?

In his essay, West argues that religious and nonreligious citizens must mend the split between secularism and religion in the public sphere by cultivating empathy toward each other (95). Through this practice of empathy, West claims, everyone will become more aware of the unique prophetic gift that religion can provide to society. Through use of the prophetic, religion—even couched in secular, existentialist, or atheistic language—can call oppressive power structures and those most responsible for them to account. According to West, we can begin to respond to these catastrophes through the “lyrical” (98). By invoking the resources of music, poetry, and fiction, the prophetic calls on us to not remain silent about tragedy. West models his own call throughout his piece by blending philosophical discourse with music, poetry, literature, and rhetoric. It is unfortunate that his essay is the shortest of the four, and his contributions to the dialogue are fairly minimal. Given his insight, one is left feeling that West's “blues” had a great deal more of value to say—particularly in response to Butler's own well-known reflections on invisibility, loss, and lamentation in Frames of War and Precarious Life (93).Footnote ³

The transcripts of the panel conversations between the speakers are truly the gems of the book. While helpful in clarifying earlier positions and statements, the lectures compiled here do not present material that cannot already be found elsewhere in the authors' essays and books. The uniqueness and value of the panel event came from bringing Habermas, Taylor, Butler, and West into face-to-face conversation about the critical question of religion and the public sphere. With the aid of excellent moderators, the panel wrestles with difficult problems—such as the possibility of translating religious language into secular terms—that might have otherwise been lost in a volume of articles by the very same authors. This organic, constructive engagement between some of the greatest thinkers of our time is the gift of the text that easily makes it worth reading.

Unfortunately, the greatest strength of the text is also its greatest weakness. The text would have been stronger had more space been devoted to the dialogues, given their unique value. Is Habermas's affirmation of the translation of religious language into public reason the same as West's argument that secular citizens should be more empathetic toward religious narratives? While Butler and Taylor share similar goals in their critiques of the invisibility of certain religious forms of life, is Butler's radical notion of cohabitation even compatible with Taylor's admittedly flexible concept of the values of secularism? The reader is left to speculate.

Beyond those specifically interested in the thought of the speakers, several other audiences might find The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere helpful. While the text is more explicitly about religion and the public sphere than about law per se, legal scholars will find in it a variety of insightful discussions of US First Amendment jurisprudence, religious language in official records, and multinational comparative approaches to religion, secularism, and the law. Scholars and teachers might use the book to brush up on the recent scholarly trajectories of Habermas, Taylor, Butler, and West. For classes on religion and politics, religion and secularism, and social philosophy, this book could serve as a brief and approachable introduction to several important thinkers while providing students with a model for constructive dialogue on controversial topics.

Situated within the broader historiographical trend of critiquing and revising earlier myths of secular trends and the demise of religion, this book plays an important role in providing a more nuanced consideration of how we might understand the multiplicity of ways different religious discourses function in the public sphere. No doubt, this book will not end any debates on the topic. But this is not a weakness. For all their disagreements, the authors concur on one important point: the precise ways democratic actors manifest religion in the public sphere will and must always remain, at least partially, an open question.