The challenge is to refine and to defend secularism, not to bow down before claims to divine authority which are incompatible with a commitment to human freedom. There are two secular traditions – one is the militant anti-clericalism of the French Revolution; the other is the more tolerant liberalism of Hume or Rawls. I follow in the second tradition. Each of us should be absolutely free to affirm or deny the authority of religion in our private lives. But when we enter the public sphere, we should recognize that our fellow citizens hold fundamentally different views as to the status and meaning of divine authority, and that it is folly to suppose that we can convince them all to embrace the same view of God.

As a consequence, when speaking in the public square, we should constrain our conversation as an act of respect to our fellow citizens: Rather than loudly proclaiming that our political positions are based on the authority of one or another God, we should keep God out of the conversation, and seek to justify policies by advancing reasons that our fellow citizens can accept, independently of their particular religious commitments. (For my own elaboration of this fundamental liberal idea, see my book Social Justice in the Liberal State.) Aggressive moralists have been proclaiming the end of modernity for quite some time – and yet modern Westerners have managed to create a civilization of unparalleled wealth, diversity, and creative vitality. The truth is that Enlightenment liberalism has never been as powerful a force in the world as it is today. It is the pseudo-religiosity of politicians like Bush that represents the real threat to the modern tradition of civility and tolerance. While the Pope is a more serious thinker than Bush, his effort to meddle in politics is especially pernicious in a Europe with a large Islamic population.

Böckenförde is wrong to suggest that moral homogeneity can “guarantee” social cohesion in a modern society. Profound moral diversity is a fundamental fact of life – and the effort to impose homogeneity from above is a recipe for oppression, conflict, and social disintegration. Liberalism depends on the on-going pursuit of social conditions that will generate the requisite forms of civility and tolerance. We must provide the young with educations that permit them to appreciate the plurality of ideals which inspire a diverse citizenry; we must work to achieve justice in the distribution of private property, and assure a well-functioning market system that allows different groups to further their different aims in peaceful exchange. Within this setting of respectful diversity, there will be plenty of people who will see the point of cultivating the arts of toleration, and who will reject the self-important moralizers who suppose that God has chosen them to lead Humanity to the promised land through the use of state power.

The best answer to fundamentalism is to relax, and encourage the sons and daughters of the fundamentalists to enjoy the benefits of live in a free and just society based on private property and free markets. By all means, we must take effective steps against real terrorists, but we should not respond to their bombs by proclaiming that our God is more powerful than their God.

Bruce Ackerman teaches Law and Political Science at Yale University. Furthermore, he is a member of the American Law Institute and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Amongst his books: We the People: Foundations (1991), We the People: Transformations (1998), Bush v. Gore: The Question of Legitimacy (editor, 2002), The new separation of powers (2004). For Meltemi he has published The Emergency Constitution (2005).

This article was published in Reset, Number 101.