hertzberg - comprehensive deliberation

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Comprehensive Deliberation: Democratic Reasoning Across Religious DifferenceBenjamin Hertzberg, July 18, 2013

**Draft Version, Please do not cite without permission**

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ABSTRACT

Many now believe that democracy grants citizens the moral permission to contributereligious arguments to democratic discussions. This permission poses a puzzle: because religiousarguments are not broadly persuasive, the citizen who makes such an argument intending to

persuade seems irrational. Further, it seems irrational for citizens to attempt to persuade some oftheir religious fellows. So the permission to contribute religious arguments seems practicallyincoherent. In this essay, I draw on a deliberative systems approach to argue that it is possible forcitizens to mutually persuade each other even if they argue from their comprehensivecommitments. Demonstrating the possibility of comprehensive deliberation shows why theintention to persuade via comprehensive arguments is not irrational. It also shows that religiouscitizens fully participate in democratic deliberation and that such deliberation can potentiallytransform citizens religious commitments. The possibility of comprehensive deliberationexplains how democratic citizens can reason across religious difference.

On July 9, 2010, the U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues met

to discuss synthetic biologyan emerging technology that allows scientists to insert

manufactured gene sequences into cells to engineer desired capabilities. That day, Paul Wolpe

presented the results of a survey of religious leaders opinions and concerns about synthetic

biology to the U.S. Presidential Commission. After the presentation, Commission member

Daniel Sulmasy, a medical doctor, philosopher, and Franciscan friar, asked Wolpe to clarify why

he was presenting religious perspectives to a public advisory body. Wolpe responded that while

some religious interventions end conversations, his purpose was to translate parochial religious

ideas into universal principles so that the commission could benefit from religions centuries

oldnuanced positions.1

This exchange between Wolpe and Sulmasy nicely illustrates the state of the debate about

the proper role of religious contributions in democratic decision-making. The emerging

consensus seems to be that citizens ought to be permitted to contributereligious arguments to

democratic discussions.2However, opinion remains divided about whether religious arguments

properlyjustifydemocratic decisions,3making it unclear what thepurposeof contributing a


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religious argument is. The claim that citizens are morally permitted to contribute religious

arguments thus poses a two-part puzzle for deliberative democratic theory:

The first part of the puzzle concerns the purpose of offering religious arguments in

democratic discussions. One fundamental aim of democratic talk is to persuade others, particular

others who disagree. But drawing on ones religion seems unlikely to persuade others. Therefore,

the citizen who makes a religious argument intending to persuade seems to be acting irrationally:

she employs a means that will not lead to her intended end. The moral permission to contribute

religious arguments thus seems practically pointless, at least insofar as persuasion is concerned.

The second part of the puzzle concerns citizens who intend to persuade their religious

fellows. Some religious people are integraliststhose who believe they are obligated to give

their religion priority in ordering their beliefs and values.4Given this prioritizing, it seems

impossible for non- or differently-religious citizens to persuade integralists, since the integralist

will ignore any conclusion that conflicts with their understanding of their religions demands. So

attempting to democratically persuade an integralist also seems irrational. Furthermore, if such

an integralist contributes a religious argument intending to persuade others, he seems to violate a

basic kind of reciprocity: he expects others to be open to persuasion on the basis of his religious

argument while he is unwilling to be persuaded by his fellows non-religious or differently

religious arguments. The integralists intention to persuade others by means of a religious

argument seems doubly problematic: not only is he irrationally choosing a means that will not

lead to his intended end, his choice of that means also seems morally objectionable, since it

depends on an invidious inconsistency between his expectations of others and of himself.

This two-part puzzle is a consequence of the permission to make religious arguments in

democratic discussions. Extant discussions of that permission, however, have ignored it. This is


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in part because the extant arguments suggest that citizens may have purposes other than

persuasion in mind for their religious contributions. Many political theorists justify including

religious arguments by appeal to respect for conscience, suggesting that citizens may intend to

satisfy a religious obligation when they contribute a religious argument.5Others justify the

permission as a means to provide assurance that citizens accept fair terms of social cooperation,

which suggests intent to inform rather than persuade.6Others accommodate religion by

abandoning deliberative norms in favor of agonistic contestation, suggesting that the purpose of

contributing religious arguments is to differentiate political allies from enemies and rally the

allies support.

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These alternative possible purposes highlight the significance of the above

puzzle for deliberative democracy: those who defend the permission to contribute religious

arguments do not explain how those arguments contribute to deliberative opinion and will

formation through mutual persuasion.

Only Habermas provides an account of how religious arguments contribute to decision-

making: He argues that citizens can cooperatively translate religious arguments into secular

terms and thereby enable them to contribute to formal decision-makingthe view Wolpe

appealed to when responding to Sulmasy.8Habermas account, however, relies on epistemic

conditions for the possibility of religious translation that are unnecessary. Comprehensive

deliberation shows that the most important necessary conditions for religious arguments to

contribute to mutual persuasion are sociological rather than epistemological. As a consequence,

democracies are more robustly able to include religious arguments than Habermas suggests.

My aim is to show how it is possible for democratic citizens to argue from their religious

or comprehensive commitments and still coherently intend to persuade across deep

disagreements. In other words, I argue for the possibility of comprehensivedemocratic


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about the good that includes religions and philosophies. He used it to distinguish reasons that

properly justify constitutions and laws (which he terms public and which arise from political

conceptions of justice) from those comprehensive reasons that do not. All religions are

comprehensive views, but not all comprehensive views are religions.10Comprehensive views are

systems of beliefs and values with different epistemologiesstandards for determining the

views required beliefs, its moral demands, and its ways of deciding how to apply such demands

to contemporary questions. Adjectivally, comprehensive is most important in its contrastive

sense, to denote views that are not part of a potentially shared, reasonable political conception of

justice.

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The comprehensivein comprehensive deliberation signifies that persuasion is possible

within discussions that appeal to bothshared norms and values as well as those that are not

shared.

A comprehensive argument is thus an argument whose premises invoke a comprehensive

views values, norms, and/or epistemic standards as premises in order to justify a conclusion.

There are many types of religious comprehensive arguments. The March 2007 Evangelical

Declaration Against Torture is a prominent example. It justifies the conclusion that the U.S.

government ought not torture by appeal to evangelicals shared norm of respect for human rights,

a norm whose justification stems from the sacred value of human life, a value which is then

justified by appeal to the Christian Bible.12Other religious arguments are a kind of shorthand,

like when members of Jewish Voice for Peace protest, holding signs that say, The Siege of

Gaza betrays Jewish Values. The conclusion is clearly implied, but the details are left out. The

practice of publicly citing scripture to justify a public policy, like when Christians cite Leviticus

18:22 in order to argue against gay marriage, is also a form of comprehensive argument, though

a distinctly inferior one. Simply citing Leviticus not only ignores essential moral and political


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questions but also avoids interpretative questions essential to Christians own relationship to the

Bible. Like other arguments, then, some comprehensive arguments are strong, some are weak,

some are fallacious and some are not, and some adhere to their views epistemic standards while

others fail to do so.

II

Given the above definition of comprehensive argument, the puzzle the moral permission

to contribute such arguments to democratic discussion poses can be stated more clearly.

Deliberative theories of democracy focus on the role of political talk in transforming citizens

preferences and opinions (in contrast to aggregative theories that take preferences as fixed).

Political talk contributes to that transformation in at least two ways: first, by supplying

potentially new information that may change citizens opinions; and second, by supplying

arguments that may persuade citizens to change their opinions. It is not at all clear how a

religious argument contributes to this second type of deliberative transformation when it is

addressed to a democratic public, rather than some particular religious community.

Showing that such contribution is possible is important because of the centrality of

persuasion-based opinion change to deliberative theories of democracy. Such theories justify

democratic institutions by appeal to either the moral and/or the epistemic effects of broad,

egalitarian, responsive discussion. On the moral view, deliberation secures the legitimacy of

democratic decisions by allowing citizens to deliberate about the laws and policies to which they

are subject.13On the epistemic view, deliberation accesses and improves the situated knowledge

and perspectives of citizens in order to ensure laws and policies conform to some standard of

truth.14


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Both the moral and epistemic accounts of deliberation suggest that the possibility of

mutual persuasion is central to the justification of democracy. Citizens should make arguments

addressed to their fellows, respond to those fellows arguments, and revise their positions in

response to better arguments. Morally, such discussion is a process of collective opinion and

will-formation in which the ideal goal is consensus. Citizens must attempt to persuade their

fellows and be open to being persuaded by them so that they can forge agreements out of their

disparate opinions. Epistemically, deliberation relies on the same process of exchange, response,

and reformulation, and the same aim for and openness to persuasion, in order to enable

discussion to discover the best decision. For both views, deliberation must be transformative:

citizens must be open to persuasion as they confront their fellows arguments.15Religious

arguments seem problematic here because it is not clear that they will persuade and because

religious people may not be open to persuasion.

Consider the first part of the puzzle: citizens who contribute religious arguments

intending to persuade others in a religiously pluralistic liberal democracy appear to be acting

irrationally. Rationality in intention generally requires means-ends coherence: if one intends end

E and E requires means M but one does not also intend M, then one is behaving irrationally.16

Religious arguments will not persuade all, or even most, citizens, since religious norms, values,

and epistemic standards do not qualify as reasons for many citizens. Therefore, if a citizen

rationally intends to persuade, she ought to make some other argument.

This claim is limited. I am not arguing that those who choose to engage religious citizens

and discuss their religious views them will never have their own opinions affected by the

process, or that they are irrational to do so. They may well change their minds as a consequence


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of their interaction. But unless they are directly persuaded by a religious argument, the religious

argument does not actually contribute to their opinion change.

Consider the following five different ways a deliberative interaction with a religious

argument might change opinions: First, direct persuasion: I make an argument, reasoning from

premises to conclusion, and you assess my premises and their logical relations and are either

persuaded or not. Under direct persuasion, the argument directly affects opinion, but only those

who accept the premises and their logical relations will accept the conclusion. If the premises

derive from a religions values, norms, or epistemic standards, then the argument will not

persuade those who do not accept that religion.

The second is immanent criticism: I make an argument, you adopt some of my premises

for the sake of argument and then show me that their logical relationships are different than I

thought and so they lead to a different conclusion. In this case, you may well persuade me to

change my mind, but we have not exchanged reasons, and my views have not persuaded you of

anything.

Third is radicalized disagreement: I make an argument for a conclusion, and though you

previously accepted the premises and the logical relations on which I rely, you find the

conclusion I draw both odious and inescapable. In response, you change your mind and deny the

premises. Again, your opinion is altered, but my argument does not persuade you, rather the

opposite. Religious arguments may well radicalize disagreements, but they are not thereby

persuading citizens.17

The fourth possibility is empathetic identification: I explain my views through argument

or narrative, and, as you understand them and identify with them, your opinion of me or my

position changesyou come to see me as more like you, or more deserving of tolerance or


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respect than you previously thought. In this case as well, the specific religious argument I make

does not contribute to your change in opinion; rather, the story I tell triggers reasons for

identification, tolerance, or respect you already hold but misapplied based on inadequate

information that my narrative rectified.

Finally, the fifth possibility arises from some social epistemological views of peer

disagreement. On some accounts, if I am your epistemic peer, my view affects the confidence

you have in your own.18If I make a religious argument for a conclusion you accept and I am

your peer, then my argument may increase the confidence you have in your view. But it does this

because I am your peer, not because the specific reasons I have for my view influence you. So

here again, the religious argument does not persuade you. It is only in the case of direct

persuasion that the religious argument I make affects your opinion, and yet religious arguments

cannot directly persuade a democratic public, because that public does not accept the premises

on which such arguments rely.

Claiming that religious arguments will not persuade a democratic public does not imply

that they are conversation stoppers, as Richard Rorty once argued, or that they are inaccessible

or unintelligible.19This overstates the problem. A citizen with knowledge of the religion upon

which such an argument draws can understand, criticize, and discuss it with her fellows.20The

conversation continues. However, unless this citizen herself ascribes to the norms, values, or

epistemic standards upon which the argument draws, that argument will not persuade her.

Consider the Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Even if I agree that states ought not

torture, the specific argument in the Declaration will not persuade me unless I accept either the

account of human dignity on which it is based or the interpretation of the Christian Bible that

justifies that account, or both. So the citizen who acts on the moral permission to make religious


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arguments intending to persuade her fellows seems to be quite confused: she is not choosing the

proper means to achieve her intended end.21

One might respond that even if I do not accept all the premises on which a religious

argument relies, there may be some that I do accept, and those may persuade me. For example,

even if I deny the interpretation of the Christian Bible offered in the Declaration on Torture, I

may still be persuade by the reasoning from human dignity to opposition to torture. This

response suggests that, because the Declaration uses a religious argument to justify a more

broadly held value, human dignity, the Declaration as a whole can contribute to persuasion. That

may be the case, but to move in this direction is to bracket the religious grounds of the argument.

It is to admit that religious arguments, by themselves, donotcontribute to democratic

persuasion.

This first part of the puzzle is not a reason to exclude religious arguments from

democratic discussions. Instead, it argues that the intention to persuade a democratic public by

means of a religious argument is irrational. Citizens who contribute religious arguments to

democratic discussions may coherently do so with other intentions. They may intend to fulfill a

religious obligation or inform their fellows about why they feel the way they do. Nevertheless, it

seems that the moral permission to contribute religious arguments is practically limited: any

citizen who wishes to persuade her fellows and acts rationally will, at the very least, make other

arguments in addition to her religious ones.

The second part of the puzzle is more serious. It pertains to a subset of deeply devoted

religious people. Some religious believers feel that their religions obligate them to give their

religious commitments overriding priority in ordering their beliefs and values. Following

convention, I call these people integralists.22Integralists see themselves as bound to ignore


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arguments that do not appeal to their religion when the conclusions of those arguments conflict

with their religions teachings. Their religious commitments will thus always trump their fellow

citizens non- or differently-religious arguments. Citizens intention to persuade integralists,

then, seems irrational.23Furthermore, when integralist citizens contribute a religious argument

intending to persuade their fellows, their action seems to reveal an invidious double standard:

they intend to persuade others by means of a comprehensive argument when they are not open to

persuasion by their fellows comprehensive arguments. The second part of the puzzle asks to

what extent integralists can participate in deliberative opinion formation on the same terms as

their fellows.

Consider a discussion about abortion restrictions. An integralist Catholic citizen will not

find an argument that does not appeal to scripture, Catholic tradition, or pronounced, orthodox

Catholic teaching persuasive. To even begin to persuade him, his fellows need to have sufficient

knowledge of Catholicism to offer him Catholic arguments. Since many of his fellows either lack

the knowledge required to make such arguments or lack the authority and religious commitments

required to make such arguments authentically, it seems impossible to democratically persuade

him.

In turn, if this integralist intends to persuade others on the basis of his comprehensive

values he exhibits a double standard, even if his unwillingness to be persuaded by other

arguments is relatively restricted. Imagine that the above abortion-opposing integralist accepts

Rawlss ideal of public reasonnamely that laws about constitutional essentials and matters of

basic justice must be justified by reasons from the set of reasonable political conceptions of

justice.24Suppose further that one were able to conclusively demonstrate that some abortion

restriction could not be justified by appeal to any reasonable political conception. Given that our


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integralist accepts the ideal of public reason, such a demonstration would be reason for him to

revise his view such that it was no longer permissible to legislate that particular restriction. His

acceptance of the ideal of public reason implies that he is persuadable so long as argument is

restricted to premises arising from the set of reasonable political conceptions. Of course, this

demonstration would not have any effect on his religious opposition to abortionthe

demonstration is public rather than comprehensive. If this integralist, then, contributes a religious

argument to democratic discussion (and integralism is generally taken to obligate people to do

so) intending to persuade his fellows, then hestilloffers a comprehensive argument intending to

persuade his fellows while not being open to persuasion on the basis of their comprehensive

views.

The above, then, is the two-part puzzle religious arguments pose to deliberative

democracy. Because of deep religious differences within any contemporary liberal democratic

citizenry, religious arguments will not persuade a democratic public; therefore, making religious

arguments intending to persuade seems irrational. Furthermore, some religious citizens are

integralists and seem religiously obligated to prevent democratic argument from affecting their

views. Persuading them seems impossible, and when they attempt to persuade others by means

of religious arguments, they act on a morally problematic double standard. The moral permission

to contribute religious arguments thus seems moot: it may allow people to publicly make

religious arguments, but it cannot make those arguments persuasive. As a consequence, religious

arguments to not contribute to democratic persuasion, and the full incorporation of religious

citizens, particularly integralists, into deliberative opinion and will formation remains in

question.

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Comprehensive deliberation offers a solution to the two-part puzzle the moral permission

to contribute religious arguments poses to deliberative democracy. If I can show that persuasion

across religious difference is possible, both when citizens contribute religious arguments

intending to persuade and when citizens intend to persuade religious integralists, then I will have

addressed both parts of the puzzle. The conclusion above that this kind of persuasion is

impossible depends on one crucial assumption: that persuasion must potentially occur in each

individualdeliberative interaction. Instead, if one considers how persuasion occurs within a

deliberative system, it is much easier to show how a religious argument contributes tothe

persuasion of a democratic public. As it turns out, whether or not religious arguments can

possibly contribute to persuading a democratic public depends on certain empirical social

conditions. For the many democracies in which these conditions obtain, religious arguments can

contribute to persuasion.

The classic ideal of deliberative democracy is intensely participatory and imagines that

each individual citizen participates in the process of collective reasoning, sharing the reasons for

their views and responding to their fellows reasons. Openness to persuasion is thought, then, to

characterize each deliberative interaction.25Under such a stringent view, the above puzzle is

insuperable: persuasion across religious difference is impossible, for the reasons explored in

section II. However, the classical ideal has other serious problems: it is so stringent that it leads

inevitably to the conclusion that large, diverse, representative democracies cannot be

appropriately deliberative. In response, some theorists have developed views that apply

deliberative norms not to each individual argumentative interaction but to the deliberative

democratic system as a whole.26In this framework, individual parts of a deliberative

democratic system may perform different functions and support different deliberative virtues.


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Legislatures, for example, ideally provide for the open and reciprocal exchange of arguments

while campaigns mobilize citizens and ensure public participation. Neither part is sufficiently

deliberative alone, but the whole system is.

Once deliberative norms are applied to the system of democratic discussion, rather than

to each individual interaction, it is much easier to show how a religious argument can possibly

contribute to persuasion. In a one-on-one interaction, any argument (religious or otherwise) only

contributes to persuasion if similar sets of reasons have persuasive force for both individuals, for

the reasons I explored above. At the level of a deliberative system, however, there are other

possibilities. Consider the empirical consequences of religious pluralism for a populations

relationship to a religious tradition. In that population, there will be a set of people who consider

themselves adherents to that religion: people who accept, to some sufficient degree according to

them and their religious community, the norms, values, and epistemic standards of that religion.

There will also be a subset of those adherents who are integralists: people who accept the norms,

values, and epistemic standards of their religion andbelieve that those norms, values, and

standards have priority in ordering their beliefs and commitments.

There will also be sets of people who loosely affiliate with that religion along one or

more of at least two different dimensions: first, there are those who loosely affiliate in terms of

religious practices. Perhaps they attended as children and were educated in that tradition, but

they drifted away in adulthood. They still accept the traditions values, norms, and epistemic

standards, but they no longer consistently practice its ritualsJews who identify as such but only

attend synagogue on the High Holidays, for example. Second, and more crucially for the below,

there will be those who loosely affiliate in terms of religious belief. These are people who

identify as members of a religious community even though they reject some or many of that


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religions norms, values, and epistemic standards. Belief-based loose affiliation need not have

any relation to practice-based loose affiliation. Some people who attend church regularly may

deny much of what is considered orthodox Christian belief in their denomination, while others

who only show up for services on Christmas and Easter (if then) nevertheless accept their

denominations understanding of Christian values, norms, and epistemic standards. There will be

another set of people who have left their tradition of origin entirely: they no longer identify with

that tradition in terms of beliefs or practices, or perhaps they affiliate with an alternative one.

The above range of peoples different relationships to a religious tradition is a natural

result of freedoms of conscience and association; the breadth of that rangethe number of

people who fall in the middling areas between integralist affiliation and non-affiliationis likely

to increase when a religious tradition becomes an accepted part of the social life of a liberal

democracy. Consider, for example, the changes that occurred during the twentieth century in

Catholicism in the United States. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, anti-Catholic

animus in the U.S. Protestant majority led Catholics to live in ethnic enclaves where affiliation

with Catholicism was relatively consistent and expected both in practice and belief. However, as

Catholicism became an accepted part of American society, the range of relationships to the

Church among Americans has become much broader: looser affiliation, both in terms of practice

and belief, is more common.27This spectrum of different affiliation relationships to a religious

tradition applies to each religion (or comprehensive doctrine) in a society, and as a consequence,

any individual may have a complicated set of different affiliation relationships with different

religious or comprehensive traditions: lapsed Catholics, secular Jews, mainline Protestants who

were raised in fundamentalist homes, Protestant converts to Islam, etc.


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Now imagine that one of the integralist Catholics contributes a religious argument to a

democratic discussion intending to persuade her fellow citizens. Some in her audience

undoubtedly are not Catholic, and the premises of the argument do not count as reasons to them.

It does not persuade them (even though they may understand it, empathize with it, and be able to

criticize it). But there may also be those who loosely identify with Catholic beliefs, or who

otherwise have a set of values that overlaps, to some degree, with the Catholic values that she

appeals to in making her argument. Our integralist Catholics argument may persuade some of

those citizens. And, potentially, some of those citizens may be able to articulate a different

argument for the same conclusion that appeals to alternative values and norms that are not

exclusive to Catholicism. Citizens who do not share any of the norms or values to which the

integralist Catholic appealed, then, may be persuaded by the argument that one of these looser

affiliates makes. This possibility shows how a deliberative democraticsystemmakes persuasion

possible across comprehensive differences: the integralist Catholic does not directly persuade the

non-Catholic; rather, her argument persuades the loosely affiliated Catholic who then persuades

the non-Catholic. Given that this chain of persuasion ispossible, the integralists intention to

persuade by contributing a religious argument is no longer irrational. The means she has chosen

can plausibly lead to her intended end.

Consider the Jubilee Movement as an example of a religious argument contributing to

persuasion in a deliberative system. The Jubilee Movement was a transnational grassroots

advocacy campaign that worked to persuade wealthy countries and international organizations to

forgive the sovereign debt of the worlds poorest nations. The Jubilee movement garnered

considerable persuasive power for sovereign debt relief by linking it to the Biblical idea of the

Jubilee year. In the Mosaic Law, the Jubilee is part of Sabbath observance: every 50thyear debts


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were to be categorically forgiven and land was to be returned to its original owners (Leviticus

25:10). A British politics professor, Martin Dent, suggested that the Jubilee year provided an

argument for international debt relief; his religious argument for the policy persuaded Christian

Aid and the Anglican and Catholic Churches to embrace and advocate for it. The Jubilee

movement then used a combination of religious and secular arguments to persuade the G8

nations and the IMF and World Bank to write off $23.4 billion of debts held by 19 impoverished

countries.28The Jubilee movement is thereby an example of a religious contribution to

deliberation (transnational in this case) persuading religious people who accept the premises on

which it draws, and thereby contributing to the persuasion of other actors who do not accept the

original religious premises or their relevance for international financial decisions (the officials of

the G8 nations and the IMF and World Bank).29

The above hypothetical and example shows how it is possible for a religious argument to

contribute to persuasion across comprehensive differences within a deliberative democratic

system. Reversing the hypothetical explains how it is that integralist citizens can be persuaded by

reasons offered in democratic discussions. Imagine that a non-Catholic citizen offers some

argument, religious or otherwise. That argument will not directly persuade the Catholic

integralist, for reasons explored in section II. It may, however, persuade a loose affiliate, who

may then offer arguments to the integralist that appeal to scripture and Catholic tradition and

authority for the same conclusion. These arguments have the potential to persuade the integralist.

At the system-level, then, the non-Catholics argument contributes to the persuasion of the

Catholic integralist. A citizens intention to persuade an integralist by contributing a non-

religious or differently religious argument is no longer irrational. Similarly, the integralist who

intends to persuade by means of a religious argument need not rely on an invidious double


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standard: she simply accepts whatever arguments are most persuasive to her, given her beliefs

and commitments, and expects others to do the same.

Consider the acceptance of black men into the lay priesthood of the Mormon Church as

an example of the above hypothetical in action.30Before 1978, ordination to the Mormon

priesthood was restricted to those who were not descended from black Africans. During the Civil

Rights era in the U.S., many Americans argued that Mormon racial exclusion was unjust and

protested it. Mormons, however, resisted change. Racial exclusion was a matter of religious

conscience, a categorical demand supported by revelation, Mormon tradition, and Mormon

scripture. Their fellows arguments that their religious practices were unjust quite simply did not

matter.31

At the same time, however, individual Mormons began establishing an independent

Mormon public sphere.Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought(first published in 1966)

provided a forum for Mormons to criticize and evaluate their beliefs and practices. Many (non-

integralist) Mormons were persuaded by arguments against the Churchs racial exclusions and

usedDialogue as a space in which to examine and rethink those practices. Lester Bush published

the most significant work on the question; his careful historical research showed that Joseph

Smith (Mormonisms founder) ordained black men to the priesthood, that the racial ban

originated during Brigham Youngs leadership without any officially recorded revelation, and

that the various scriptural arguments Mormons used to justify the ban arose afterBrigham

Young initiated it, as a post-hoc rationalization.32Although the official pronouncement ending

racial exclusion relied entirely on the Church hierarchys revelatory authority, observers noted

that Church leaders had read Bushs article with great interest.33Further, an explanatory heading


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to the pronouncement ending racial exclusion (called Official Declaration Two) added to

Mormon scripture in 2013 explicitly repeats the first two of Bushs conclusions.34

The ending of the Mormon Churchs racial exclusions, then, fits the model of

comprehensive deliberation outlined above. Non-Mormons argue that the Churchs ban on

ordaining black men to the priesthood is unjust. These arguments persuade non-integralist

Mormons who find arguments that appeal to Mormon values, norms, and epistemic standards to

argue for overturning the ban. Those arguments persuade Mormon leaders, who use their

authority to end the racial ban. Thus arguments exchanged within the U.S. deliberative system

transformed the Mormon Church.

Because a deliberative democratic system can carry arguments to religious integralists

such that those integralists are potentially persuaded, that system resolves both aspects of the

second part of the puzzle. It is not irrational for a citizen to contribute a public or comprehensive

argument intending to persuade a religious integralist. Similarly, the integralist who contributes a

religious argument intending to persuade others no longer implies an invidious double standard.

She can contribute her argument intending for it to potentially persuade some citizens who then

may potentially persuade others. She is open to persuasion on the basis of the values she accepts,

a standard she coherently applies to herself and others. Furthermore, as the Mormon priesthood

example suggests, loosely affiliated members of her own tradition can possibly produce

arguments that will carry the conclusions of broader democratic discussions to her expressed in

arguments that appeal to her most important values.

An important caveat: I am arguing for a how possibly claim here. I am not arguing that

any one given religious or comprehensive argument will contribute to persuading a democratic

public; there are no guarantees. Some religious arguments, after all, are fallacious even by the


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standards of the religion to which they appeal. Some will fail to persuade. The above account of

comprehensive deliberation addresses the objection that religious arguments cannot possibly

contribute to democratic persuasion. It also shows how religious integralists can be persuaded by

arguments exchanged in democratic deliberations. That said, there is an important empirical

condition on my possibility claims: There must exist a sufficiently large number of people in the

non-integralist and loose affiliate categories to mediate between the integralists in any one given

religion and those who are outside of that tradition. While it seems likely that this condition

obtains in most religiously pluralistic liberal democracies and for most religious traditions within

them, there may be some polities or some religions for which the condition does not obtain. An

integralist religion that strives to rigorously maintain boundaries between those within the

tradition and those outside of itone that is dedicated in principle to its own insularitymay

well prevent the development of a sufficient number of non-integralists or loose affiliates to

enable arguments drawing on that religion to contribute to the system of democratic reasoning.

The Amish, many Hasidic groups, and Russian Orthodox Old Believers are all plausible

examples. Further, a society that is deeply divided between two adherents of only two different

comprehensive views such that there simply are insufficient people whose value commitments

enable them to mediate between the two groups is also a case where comprehensive deliberation

is not likely to be possible. Outside of these cases, however, comprehensive deliberation

democratic persuasion across deep religious and other value differencesis possible.35

IV

Comprehensive deliberation is different from and an improvement on other extant views

of democratic engagement with religious arguments. The two most prominent views here are

Jeffrey Stouts and Jrgen Habermass. Stout labels his view Socratic; he argues that citizens


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ought to share their reasons for a conclusion and then mutually criticize each other immanently.

If I seek to persuade a Catholic to support stem cell research, I ought to show how norms and

values she already holds as a Catholic lead to that conclusion, and vice versa if a Catholic wishes

to persuade me that stem cell research is morally wrong.36Stouts view, however, suffers from

two flaws comprehensive deliberation does not. First, Stouts view is too individualistic: to have

the requisite knowledge to accurately and fairly criticize all of ones various interlocutors in a

complex pluralistic democracy, one would need several Ph.Ds. By relying on knowledge and

value commitments dispersed across the participants in a democracys deliberative system,

comprehensive deliberation improves upon Stouts view. Second, Stout is too cavalier about the

hurdles to respectful criticism across religious difference: It is one thing for me to immanently

explore differences of opinion between myself and a Catholic about stem cell research; it is quite

another for me to presume to tell my Catholic fellow why she understands her religion

mistakenly when she concludes that it forbids stem cell research. Such criticism is not simply

impermissible; it requires sensitivity to issues of religious authenticity and commitment that

Stout ignores.37Comprehensive deliberation, in contrast, recognizes that diversity among the

value commitments within any given religious tradition opens the possibility that the exchange of

reasons within a deliberative democratic system itself will provide the type of criticism Stout

relies on individual deliberative interactions to accomplish.38

The most serious alternative to comprehensive deliberation is Jrgen Habermass

institutional translation proviso. As part of his defense of the moral permission to contribute

religious arguments, Habermas explains how religious arguments contribute to democratic

decision-making.39There are some similarities between his view and comprehensive

deliberation: Habermas argues for the same conclusionthat religious arguments can potentially


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contribute to democratic decisionsand he also relies on a deliberative systems account to

explain how religious arguments do so. For Habermas, if secular and religious citizens have both

undergone complimentary epistemic learning processes, then secular citizens can cooperate with

religious citizens in developing secular translations of religious arguments. Once translated,

those arguments are then admissible into formal political institutions, and so religious citizens

can understand themselves as participating in the democratic decision-making process even

though only secular reasons justify decisions. Habermas argues that for religious and secular

citizens to be able to cooperate in this translation, religious citizens have to accept religious

pluralism, the authority of science, and the priority of secular reason in politics. Secular citizens,

in turn, must abandon exclusive forms of scientism and naturalism that see religion as simply

error; instead, they must adopt post-metaphysical philosophy, a view in which reason

recognizes its own limits and remains agnostic toward the sacred tenets of religion. Only if all

citizens undergo one of these two learning processes, Habermas argues, can citizens

cooperatively translate religious arguments. So Habermas argues that the universal

accomplishment of these two epistemic learning processes is a necessary condition for the

possibility of religious arguments contributing to democratic persuasion.

Comprehensive deliberation is both different from and more robust than Habermass

institutional translation proviso. The clearest difference is that, in comprehensive deliberation,

the universal adoption of Habermass epistemic attitudes is not necessary for religious arguments

to potentially persuade a democratic public. Instead, what is required is a sufficiently broad range

of citizens with a sufficiently diverse set of affiliation relationships to the religion on which some

argument draws. That range of affiliation relationships allows comprehensive arguments to

contribute to persuasion in a deliberative system. Sociological diversity within religious


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traditions, a natural consequence of freedoms of thought and association, then, is the necessary

condition for comprehensive contribution to persuasion, rather than Habermass epistemic

learning processes. Given comprehensive deliberation, some citizens can deny the priority of

secular reason or the potential truth content of religious traditions without undermining the

possibility of comprehensive arguments contributing to democratic persuasion. Comprehensive

deliberation is therefore more robust than Habermass institutional translation proviso: it

functions under significantly less stringent conditions.

Finally, it is important to note the relationship between comprehensive deliberation and

prominent conceptions of public justification. I must first distinguish persuasion from

justification generally: persuasion denotes agent-induced opinion change without any evaluative

claim. If I claim that A has persuaded B of C, I am claiming that A has acted upon B in order to

change Bs opinion of C. I am not evaluating As or Bs action. It may be the case that B ought

to accept As argument for C, but it may also be the case that A used a fallacy to persuade B of

C, and B would be mistaken in accepting C. In both cases, persuasion occurs. However, if I

claim that A has justified C to B, then I am making a normative claim. Here, B ought to adopt C

as a consequence of As argument. To fail to adopt C, all others things equal, would be to make a

mistake. My argument for the possibility of comprehensive deliberation relies on the conditions

for persuasion across comprehensive differences. It does not take a position on whether or not

comprehensive arguments justify democratic decisions. Indeed, I have not taken a position on

public justification at all.

Comprehensive deliberation therefore does not require any of the various different

available conceptions of public justification and is logically compatible with many of them. That

said, certain conceptions of the normative significance of deliberation imply certain conceptions


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of public justification if one adopts them with comprehensive deliberation. Consider, for

example, Gerald Gauss and Kevin Valliers convergence conception of public justification, in

which citizens full range of commitments, religious or otherwise, help to determine whether

some policy is publicly justified. Citizens, on Gaus and Valliers view, may convergeon policies

for a wide variety of different reasons (comprehensive or otherwise), instead of coming to

consensuson some policy for the same reason.40

Because of the similarity between the

permissible role of differing comprehensive arguments in democratic persuasion on my view and

in convergence justification on Gaus and Valliers, it might seem like comprehensive

deliberation implies a convergence conception of public justification. And indeed, both views

permit citizens to either be persuaded of or to justify some policy for different reasons. But to

claim that comprehensive deliberation requires convergence public justification elides the

distinction between persuasion and justification. This would only be the case if one adopted a

pure procedural view of democratic deliberation such that the only required justification of some

decision is that it is the outcome of proper democratic deliberation. Then, whatever one

persuades a majority of citizens to accept is justified by definition, and the differing reasons

offered to persuade in comprehensive deliberation become the public justification, via

convergence, of the decision.41If, however, one believes that other considerations beyond

properly conducted deliberation are required to justify policies (if one is not a pure

proceduralist), then it is not the case that comprehensive deliberation implies convergence

justification. Indeed, one could consistently believe that comprehensive deliberation is possible

and also believe that justifying democratic decisions requires public reasons that every citizen

could potentially acceptreasons that come from reasonable political conceptions of justice.

Comprehensive deliberation is thus potentially compatible with Rawlss ideal of public reason,


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so long as one considers that ideals criteria for the justification of democratic decisions alone.

Fully analyzing the relationship between comprehensive deliberation and the ethics of

citizenship associated with that ideal raises questions I cannot answer here, except to reiterate

that comprehensive deliberation presumes a moral permission to contribute comprehensive

arguments to democratic discussion.

V

Comprehensive deliberation thus solves the puzzle the moral permission to contribute

religious arguments to democratic discussions posed to deliberative democracy. Because

comprehensive deliberation is possible, citizens may coherently intend to persuade a democratic

public by means of a comprehensive argument and may coherently intend to persuade religious

integralists. Further, religious integralists can contribute religious arguments without involving

themselves in a morally problematic double standard. Comprehensive deliberation shows how

persuasion occurs across deep comprehensive differences in a deliberative democratic system. It

shows that the religious, non-religious, and differently religious can reason together about

political questions, even if they speak from within their comprehensive commitments.

The moral permission to contribute religious arguments to democratic discussions has

potentially unsettling implications for a wide variety of public policy areas: bioethics, science

policy, family and sexual policy, and the institutional relationship between religion and the state.

Nevertheless, for those who are worried about the implications of the above emerging

consensus on these policy areas, the possibility of comprehensive deliberation is good news. It

shows that even the most committed religious citizensintegralistsparticipate in the

deliberative systems of contemporary democracies and may be persuaded by the reasons

exchanged therein as they are filtered into their own religious communities and expressed in


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terms of norms and values they hold. The possibility of comprehensive deliberation thus entails

the possibility of reason-driven religious change. And so the possibility of comprehensive

deliberation has immediate practical implications for those concerned about the above religious-

political policy questions: Make your arguments. Frame them as persuasively as possible, then

trust the deliberative system to carry them to your fellow citizens, even if they deny the norms

and values to which your argument appeals. If your argument is persuasive, another citizen may

take it up and recast it in terms that make its force unavoidable, even for those who would have

categorically dismissed it when they heard it from you.

When Sulmasy asked Wople why he presented religious perspectives to the Presidential

Commission on Bioethics, Wolpe said he wished to translate parochial religious ideas into

universal principles so that the commission could benefit from religions centuries

oldnuanced positions. Showing the possibility of comprehensive deliberation offers an

alternative response to Sulmasys question: religious arguments about bioethics, like any

comprehensive argument, do not persuade all citizens. But they nevertheless potentially

contribute to persuasion within the deliberative democratic system and are changed in the

process, just as any other argument contributed to democratic discussion potentially persuades

and is similarly changed. Religious perspectives are an appropriate contribution to deliberation in

a public advisory body, then, because they are the perspectives of some citizens and participate

in the system of democratic reasoning on the same basis as any citizens deep moral

commitments.

There is one final, important implication of my argument. Because left-wing political

views, of which deliberative democracy is a prominent example, often appear (sometimes fairly,

sometimes not) antagonistic to religions citizens, many opponents trump up that antagonism to


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dissuade those otherwise attracted to the left from embracing it. Showing that religious

arguments can be fully incorporated in democratic deliberation is an important way of

preempting such tactics. Comprehensive deliberation thus protects deliberative democracys

religious flank.

1U.S. Presidential Comission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, Meeting One, Session 6, July 9

2010, available at http://bioethics.gov/node/169, accessed July 18, 2013; Kevin Beese, "A Rare2Andrew March, "Rethinking Religious Reasons in Public Justification,"American Political

Science Review107 (2013), 1-17 at p. 2.

3Christopher J. Eberle,Religious Convictions in Liberal Politics(New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2002); Jrgen Habermas, "Religion in the public sphere,"European Journal of

Philosophy14 (2006); John Rawls, The Law of Peoples: With "The Idea of Public Reason

Revisited"(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Paul Weithman,Religion and the

Obligations of Citizenship(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

4Eberle,Religious Convictions; Habermas, "Religion in the public sphere"; Jeffrey Stout,

Democracy and Tradition(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Nicholas Wolterstorff,

"The Role of Religion in Decision and Discussion of Political Issues," inReligion in the Public

Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate(Lanham, MD: Rowman &

Littlefield Publishers, 1997).

5Eberle,Religious Convictions; Wolterstorff, "The Role of Religion."


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6Rawls,Law of Peoples; Paul Weithman, Why Political Liberalism? On John Rawls's Political

Turn(New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

7

Chantal Mouffe, "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?," Social Research66

(1999), 745-758.

8Habermas, "Religion in the public sphere."

9John S. Dryzek, "Rhetoric in Democracy: A Systemic Approach,"Political Theory38 (2010),

319-339; Robert E. Goodin,Innovating Democracy: Democratic Theory and Practice after the

Deliberative Turn(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Jane Mansbridge et al., "A

Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy," inDeliberative Systems, ed. J. Mansbridge and

J. Parkinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 1-26; John Parkinson,

Deliberating in the Real Word: Problems of Legitimacy in Deliberative Democracy(New York:

Oxford University Press, 2006).

10John Rawls,Political Liberalism: With a New Introduction and the "Reply to Habermas"

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 58-66, 154-58, 212-54.11This ignores considerable complexity built into Rawlss definition; see Martha Nussbaum,

"Perfectionist Liberalism and Political Liberalism,"Philosophy & Public Affairs39 (2011), 3-45.

12National Association of Evangelicals, "An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture:

Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Terror," (2007), available at http://www.nae.net/

government-relations/endorsed-documents/409-an-evangelical-declaration-against-torture-

protecting-human-rights-in-an-age-of-terror, accessed July 18, 2013. Political theorists are fond

of this example, see: Jeremy Waldron, "Two-Way Translation: The Ethics of Engaging with

Religious Contributions in Public Deliberation,"Mercer Law Review63 (2012), 845-868;

Andrew March, "Rethinking Religious Reasons."


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13Joshua Cohen, "Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy," inDeliberative Democracy: Essays

on Reason and Politics, ed. J. Bohman and W. Rehg (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997);

Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, Why Deliberative Democracy?(Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2004), pp. 10-13.

14Elizabeth Anderson, "The Epistemology of Democracy,"Episteme: A Journal of Social

Epistemology3 (2006), 8-22; David M. Estlund,Democratic Authority: A Philosophical

Framework(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Hlne Landemore,Democratic

Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many(Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2013).

15Simone Chambers, "Deliberative Democratic Theory,"Annual Review of Political Sceince6

(2003).

16Michael Bratman,Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason(Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1987).

17

The American Religious Rights wedding of religion to social and political conservatism has

radicalized disagreement in this way, convincing many young Americans to abandon organized

religion rather than accept that their moral convictions on social issues are wrong. See Robert D.

Putnam and David E. Campbell,American Grace: How Religion Unites and Divides Us(New

York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), pp. 120-32.

18Adam Elga, "Reflection and Disagreement," in Social Epistemology: Essential Readings, ed.

A. I. Goldman and D. Whitcomb (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 158-182.

19Richard Rorty,Philosophy and Social Hope(New York: Penguin Books, 1999), pp. 168-74.


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20Stout,Democracy and Tradition, pp. 85-91; Waldron, "Two-Way Translation." Rorty also

withdrew some of his concerns about religious arguments: Richardy Rorty, "Religion in the

Public Square: A Reconsideration," The Journal of Religious Ethics31 (2003), 141-149.21

For a congenial analysis of why religious arguments specifically addressed to non-believers

like the ontological argument for the existence of Godfail to persuade, see Jennifer Fausts

analysis of doxastic question begging: "Can Religious Arguments Persuade?"International

Journal for Philosophy of Religion63 (2008), 71-86. The problem is even more basic for

practical religious arguments, since their conclusions rely on premises that those outside of the

tradition generally do not accept.

22Nancy L. Rosenblum, "Pluralism, Integralism, and Political Theories of Religious

Accomodation," in Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith: Religious Accomodation in

Pluralist Democracies, ed. N. L. Rosenblum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 3-31;

Eberle,Religious Convictions, pp. 144-46; Putnam and Campbell,American Grace, p. 440;

Wolterstorff, "The Role of Religion," p. 105.23Paul Weithman suggests this problem when he argues that deliberative democrats are likely to

accuse religious citizens of holding their views undemocratically. See Weithman, Obligations

of Citizenship, pp. 86-87. The irrationality of the intention to persuade integralists requires

understanding integralists religious commitments statically: their religious commitments as they

understand them at time T trump other commitments in cases of conflict. If, however, religious

commitments are dynamic, then a conflict between a religious commitment and some other

commitment could lead adherents to reformulate the religious commitment so that the conflict

dissolves. Having thus altered her understanding of her religious obligation, the integralist still

prioritizes her religious commitments. I presume static religious commitments for two reasons: it


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better reflects some religions belief in the timeless of their teachings, and it makes it

considerably more difficult to persuade integralists. If I can show that static integralists are

potentially persuadable, dynamic integralists definitely will be.24

Some may wonder whether integralists of this sort can consistently endorse the ideal of public

reason. They can, provided their religion respects the role of human reason in moral

epistemology and endorses the same substantive political implications as public reason. In such a

case, their obligations as citizens and as religious believers are consistent, and so they can

prioritize their religious commitments while also accepting the ideal of public reason. See

(citation removed for blind review).

25Jane Mansbridge et al., "The Place of Self-Interest and the Role of Power in Deliberative

Democracy," The Journal of Political Philosophy18 (2010), 64-100 at pp. 66-69.

26Goodin,Innovating Democracy, pp. 186-203; Jane Mansbridge, "Everyday Talk in the

Deliberative System," inDeliberative Politics: Essays on Democracy and Disagreement, ed. S.

Macedo (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 211-241; Parkinson,Deliberating in the

Real Word, pp. 166-73; Mansbridge et al., "A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy."

27Putnam and Campbell,American Grace, pp. 296-99.

28Joshua William Busby, "Bono Made Jess Helms Cry: Jubilee 2000, Debt Releif, and Moral

Action in International Politics,"International Studies Quarterly51 (2007), 247-275.

29Some may see this example as problematic because it is difficult to determine whether

international financial leaders agreed to write off sovereign debt because of the various

arguments the Jubilee Movement used or because of the political pressure the movement brought

to bear. But this is simply to note that motivations in actual politics seldom live up to those

demanded by theoretical ideals. Assuming that non-religious arguments for sovereign debt relief


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are available, this concern does not affect my use of the example: persuasion across

comprehensive differences in a deliberative system is possible. For discussion of extending

deliberative systems beyond national institutions, see Mansbridge et al., "A Systemic Approach

to Deliberative Democracy," p. 9.

30Vatican II provides another plausible example. For discussion of the influence of the American

experience of religious liberty on the Catholic Churchs abandoning its traditional opposition to

it, see Weithman, Why Political Liberalism?, p. 311 n. 3; John T. Noonan, The Luster of Our

Country: The American Experience of Religious Freedom(Berkeley, CA: University of

California Press, 2000). For discussion of the inclusion of religious and other undemocratic

institutions within a deliberative democratic system, see Mansbridge et al., "A Systemic

Approach to Deliberative Democracy," pp. 7-10.

31Armand L. Mauss,All Abraham's Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and

Lineage(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), pp. 232-33.

32

Lester E. Bush, "Mormonism's Negro Doctrine: An Historical Overview,"Dialogue: A

Journal of Mormon Thought 8 (1973), 11-68.

33Mauss,All Abraham's Children, pp. 238-41.

34Peggy Fletcher Stack, "New Mormon Scirptures Tweak Race, Polygamy References," The Salt

Lake Tribune, March 1, 2013.

35One might object here that comprehensive deliberation asks non-integralist and loosely

affiliated citizens to mediate between integralists and non-believers in a way that all citizens

ought to do individually, as they deliberative in their own minds. There is nothing in my

argument to suggest that internal deliberation is unimportant; indeed, it is precisely the freedom

to engage in such reflection and act on it that leads to the diversity within religious traditions


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necessary for comprehensive deliberation to be possible. The objection misunderstands the way

that the external exchange of arguments influences and enriches internal deliberations: the

integralists and the non-believers internal reflection are both enhanced as a consequence of

encountering arguments for conclusions they disagree with that nevertheless appeal to reasons

they accept. Comprehensive deliberation shows how that process allows comprehensive

arguments to contribute to democratic persuasion. For discussion of internal deliberation, see

Robert E. Goodin,Reflective Democracy(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); for further

discussion of its relationship with external deliberation, see Goodin,Innovating Democracy, pp.

38-63.

36Stout,Democracy and Tradition, pp. 72-73.

37Andrew March,Islam and Liberal Citizenship: The Search for an Overlapping Consensus

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 65-96.

38Jeremy Waldron has also recently published on the ethics of engaging religious arguments; see

his Two-Way Translation. He focuses on the objection that religious arguments are

unintelligible. I, however, believe that the dilemma religious arguments pose is based not on

their intelligibility but on their persuasiveness. Comprehensive deliberation is a solution to a

dilemma Waldrons work does not address.

39Habermas, "Religion in the public sphere."

40Gerald Gaus and Kevin Vallier, "The Roles of Religious Conviction in a Publicly Justified

Polity: The Implications of Convergence, Asymmetry, and Political Institutions,"Philosophy and

Social Criticism35 (2009), 51-76; Kevin Vallier, "Liberalism, Religion, and Integrity,"

Australasian Journal of Philosophy90 (2012), 149-165.


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41Fabienne Peter, "Democratic Legitimacy and Proceduralist Social Epistemology,"Politics,

Philosophy & Economics6 (2007), 329-353.

hertzberg - comprehensive deliberation

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