In her introduction to this volume, Professor Ana María Stuven contends that “religion generally, and churches with larger and more representative memberships, are hardly marginal to the public political sphere, or to the state. . . . religion is always public and political, and those who speak in its name are as well” (p. 24). The essays that follow assess these “realities” differently and account for them in diverse, and occasionally competing, ways (p. 24).
In the opening essay, Sebastián Kaufmann challenges the Kantian and Rawlsian view that a properly secular government requires exclusive reliance on secular values and reasoning, and that religious views must be set aside or translated into secular terms. He shares Charles Taylor's view that multiple modernities are possible and that fully secular reasoning is neither neutral nor any more rational than religious reasoning. Kaufmann's views are challenged in the collection by two Chilean historians, Carlos...
