Why politics needs religion : the place of religious arguments in the public square /

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sweetman, Brendan
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: Downers Grove, Ill. : IVP Academic, [2006]
Subjects:
Online Access:Table of contents
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: a new perspective on religion and politics
  • Understanding worldviews
  • Worldviews : the center and the outer edges
  • Two major worldviews in contemporary America
  • The formal structure of a worldview
  • Worldviews and faith
  • The rationality of worldviews
  • Worldviews and religion
  • Foundational and nonfoundational beliefs
  • Lower-order and higher-order beliefs
  • Promoting our worldview : belief, action and ritual
  • The worldview of secularism
  • Secularism today
  • Secularism, politics and seculocracy
  • The influence of secularism on religion
  • Secularism as a worldview
  • Secularism as a religion
  • Religious beliefs and reason
  • What does it mean to describe a belief as "religious"?
  • Reason as a source of religious beliefs
  • The rationality of religious belief
  • Introducing reasonable religious beliefs into politics
  • How should we handle reasonable disagreements?
  • Keeping religion out of politics I
  • Religious beliefs should be excluded because they are "religious"
  • Traditional religious beliefs cannot be based on reason and evidence
  • "Secular reason" does not imply secularism
  • Secularism can better achieve overall agreement among worldviews
  • Keeping religion out of politics II
  • Most religious beliefs are higher-order beliefs, and so should be kept private
  • Religion is dangerous, secularism is benign
  • Religious beliefs should not be forced by law on those who do not think they are true
  • Religious views should be excluded according to the U.S. constitution
  • Rawls, religion and democracy
  • Arguing from within our worldview
  • John Rawls's political liberalism
  • Problems with Rawls's theory
  • Religion and democracy
  • The principle of religious freedom
  • Religion in politics
  • Introducing lower-order, rational beliefs into public arguments
  • A seculocracy for a secularist people?
  • Some practical applications
  • The relationship between church and state
  • A fictional example : form and content
  • Looking at the world upside down : on revising our terminology
  • Pluralism, relativism and religious debates : American style
  • American pluralism
  • School prayer
  • Display of traditional religious symbols in public places
  • Religion and moral issues : the euthanasia debate in Oregon
  • Moral relativism in American culture
  • The problems with relativism
  • The rhetoric of relativism
  • Tolerance : traditional and contemporary meanings.