Preliminaries to a concept of constitutional secularism

Abstract

Strong religion, insisting on the primacy of one religion's rules, confronts fundamental arrangements of constitutionalism. The chapter argues that secularism is constitutive of constitutionalism, and it is not a specific ideology, or a form of statechurch relations. It reviews the ambiguities of the notion of secularism, and it argues that for constitutionalism and democracy it is vital to require public reason giving.