Secular State and Public Reason: How to Distinguish them?

Abstract

It is common to define the secular state in terms of public reason. According to one of its leading proponents, John Rawls, public reason does not allow religious reasons to be used as the sole source of justification for using state power. It is often assumed that excluding religious reasons from the justificatory universe of state power implies that secularism should be understood as an institutional arrangement that excludes religious content from state institutions. This article reviews this thesis. It argues that the pluralist project of Rawls’ political liberalism implies accepting the possibility of institutional arrangements of secularism that do not call for this kind of exclusion. Thus, political liberalism, including the idea of public reason, is not specific regarding the institutional arrangement of secularism implemented in a constitutional democracy. Contextual factors will be crucial in determining which secularism regime to adopt.