Religious commitment and secular reason / Robert Audi.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-251) and index.

Part One : The Foundations of Democracy and the Separation of Church and State -- 1. The Plurality of Paths to Liberal Democracy -- Liberal Democracy -- Outlines of a Case for Liberal Democracy -- Freedom and Coercion -- 2. The Separation of Church and State -- Three Central Principles of Church-State Separation -- Church-State Separation Viewed from a Religious Standpoint -- Applications of Church-State Separation: Public Observances, Educational Policy, and Tax Exemption -- 3. Church-State Separation and the Justification of Governmental Power -- Liberal Democracy and Conceptions of the Good -- Surrogacy Conception of Justified Coercion -- The Positive Role of Religious Arguments in a Liberal Democracy -- -- Part Two : The Ethics of Citizenship and the Balance of Religious and Political Arguments -- 4. Religious Convictions and Secular Reasons -- Religion, Politics, and the Ethics of Citizenship -- Two Principles of Democratic Citizenship -- Some Problems of Application -- The Ethics of Citizenship and the Accommodation of Religion -- 5. Religion and Ethics: Toward Integration -- The Diverse Sources of Religious Obligation -- Religious Commitment and Political Participation -- The Principle of Theo-ethical Equilibrium -- Theology and the Autonomy of Ethics -- -- Part Three : Civic Virtue and Political Activism in a Religiously Pluralistic Democracy -- Civic Virtue -- Virtues as Normatively Structured Elements of Character -- The Grounds of Civic Virtue -- Civic Virtue and the Grounds for Sociopolitical Action -- Civic Virtue and the Balancing of Religious and Secular Reasons -- The place of religious considerations in civic discourse -- Institutional dimensions of civic virtue -- 7. Religious conviction and political activism -- Prevention of killing the innocent as a rationale for violence -- Some arguments for personhood at conception -- The restriction of abortion and the presumption of innocence -- Violence and coercion versus civilized disagreement and persuasion -- Conclusion : Ethics, religion, and democracy.