CAREY Postdoctoral Fellow 2005-06
Bryan T. McGraw
Harvard University, Political Science
Faith in Politics: the Place of Religion in Liberal Democratic Theory
and Practice
My current research focuses primarily on contemporary liberal democratic
political thought and especially on its intersection with religion.
There exists a broad consensus among political theorists that liberal
democracies are made more stable, legitimate, and free when religion
is separated from public political life. My project argues that
this consensus is often overdrawn and sometimes quite simply wrong.
I examine a number of theorists’ moral and philosophical arguments
and suggest that religiously motivated political mobilization can
actually be quite constructive democratically. This is even true
when the religious beliefs in question have an “integralist”
shape, when they explicitly deny the sort of separationist, individualist
views of religion so central to political thought since Locke and
claim instead that both private and public life ought to be organized
in accordance with that religious faith.
Through some comparisons of 19th- and 20th-century European religious
political parties, I also show that this constructiveness is not
just philosophically plausible, but it is empirically realistic
as well. In places like Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany, Catholic
and Calvinist communities, under pressure from liberalizing political
elites, constructed elaborate networks of trade unions, civic associations,
newspapers, churches, and political parties. As the most well-developed
integralist institutional structures within the context of democratic
(or democratizing) polities, these “pillars” represent
the best historical examples of the integralist challenge and suggest
how such a challenge can work to democracy’s advantage. Though
these parties were hardly perfect (politically speaking), at their
best they accomplished two important things. First, their success
in mobilizing and organizing their respective communities was crucial
to the development of political institutions and norms central to
free societies. Just as importantly, these parties, through electioneering
and political association, bound their members to the developing
political system, helping make them into democratic citizens even
before they inhabited full democracies. Although religious integralism
can (and does) pose a real challenge to liberal democratic politics,
it is a challenge best met through engagement, not marginalization
and separation.
Dr. McGraw will teach POLS 30732 - Church and State in Democratic Politics - for the Political Science department in Spring 2006.
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