John Rawls and Christian Social Engagement by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

While the reasoning in this particular speech lacks the subtlety and sophistication of its source, it is hard not to recognize in the words of the erstwhile Harvard Law Review editor the influence of the great Harvard philosophy professor John Rawls. What Barack Obama invokes here is a version of the notion of public reason—that when we intervene in the public square, we should be prepared to offer our fellow citizens reasons that are in principle accessible to them. The assumption is that no proposition resting simply on faith in the revealed truth of a religious text meets this standard. To be sure, Obama the politician focuses on the presumably grave practical problems—amounting, as he puts it, to dangers—involved in engaging what some have called prophetic witness in the public square, but Rawls and his followers have elaborated greatly on the nature and requirements of public reason. That a popular politician felt called to invoke their work in that setting is evidence of the extent of Rawls’s influence.

In this paper, I will attempt to explain Rawls’s conception of public reason, outline the strongest possible case for it, take stock of some of the leading religiously inspired objections to it, and, finally, suggest what I hope is a sober and modest alternative for religious engagement in a pluralistic public square.

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