Under God?: Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy

Michael J. Perry

Cambridge University Press, Jun 2, 2003 - Religion - 200 pages

Michael J. Perry has become well-known as a commentator on the role of faith in the public life of a liberal democracy over the past twelve years. Perry argues in this new book that political reliance on religious faith violates neither the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution nor, more broadly, the morality of liberal democracy. However, he also believes that religious believers sometimes have good reasons to be wary about relying on religious beliefs in making political decisions.

Contents

• What Does the Establishment Clause Forbid? Reflections on the Constitutionality of School Vouchers: 3
• Why Political Reliance on Religiously Grounded Morality Does Not Violate the Establishment Clause: 20
• Why Political Reliance on Religiously Grounded Morality Is Not Illegitimate in a Liberal Democracy: 35
• Mainly for the Agnostics and the Inclusionists Especially Inclusionists Who Are Religious Believers: 53
• Christians the Bible and SameSex Unions An Argument for Political SelfRestraint: 55
• Catholics the Magisterium and SameSex Unions An Argument for Independent Judgment: 86
• Religion Politics and Abortion: 98
• This Nation Under God: 124
• Notes: 131
• Index: 193

About the author

Michael J. Perry holds a Robert W. Woodruff Chair at Emory University, where he teaches in the law school. Previously, Perry held the Howard J. Trienens Chair in Law at Northwestern University, where he taught for fifteen years, and the University Distinguished Chair in Law at Wake Forest University. Perry has written on American constitutional law and theory; law, morality and religion; and human rights theory in more than sixty articles and ten books, including The Idea of Human Rights; We the People: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court; Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy; Toward a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts; and Constitutional Rights, Moral Controversy, and the Supreme Court.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Under God?: Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy
• Author: Michael J. Perry
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2003
• ISBN: 0521532175, 9780521532174
• Length: 200 pages
• Subjects: Philosophy / General; Philosophy / Political; Political Science / American Government / General; Religion / General; Religion / Religion, Politics & State