Public Reason’s Faith

Anno LIV, n. 225-226, maggio-dicembre 2019

Glen Newey has questioned whether toleration is a relevant political value for a democratic polity or merits the importance assigned to it in Rawls’s political theory.  After reviewing the relation between religion and the state in some recent interpretations of the First Amendment and their implications, this essay argues that Newey may be correct about the value of toleration in a liberal democratic polity, but if so, it is for very different reasons than those emphasized by him.