Making Religious Practices Intelligible in the Public Sphere: A Pragmatist Evaluation of Scriptural Reasoning

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2011

Abstract

In this essay, I will determine what I consider to be the requirements for the use of religion in the public sphere. For the sake of my argument, I will treat “religion” and “the public sphere” as primitive terms without feeling the need to define them in any technical way. I shall assume that anyone interested in this issue already holds certain views of what religion is and whether or not it has any value—moral, spiritual, social, etc. Similarly, I will not present a taxonomy of the myriad of positions concerning what constitutes a “public sphere” nor try to offer a topology of where such spheres exist. I am only interested in how religion, however one conceives of it, should interact with whatever one conceives of as “the public sphere.”

Original Publication Citation

“Making Religious Practices Intelligible in the Public Sphere: A Pragmatist Evaluation of Scriptural Reasoning,” The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 10.2 (2011), online at http://jsr.shanti.virginia.edu/back-issues/volume-10-no-2-december-2011-public-debate-and-scriptural-reasoning/making-religious-practices-intelligible-in-the-public-sphere/.

Publisher Statement

Permission has been granted by The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning to supply this article for educational and research purposes. More information can be found about The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning. © The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning.

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