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THAT GOVERNMENTAL INSTITUTIONS AND OFFICIALS SHOULD BE NEUTRAL REGARDING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION AND THE FREE EXERCISE OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF IS A COMMONPLACE IN AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT. THE RELATED IDEA THAT PERSONS HAVE A MORAL DUTY TO EMPLOY SECULAR REASONS AND ARGUMENTS WHEN PARTICIPATING IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE IS ALSO WIDELY HELD. THUS, WHEN PARTICIPATING IN PUBLIC POLITICAL DISCOURSE, THE RELIGIOUS BELIEVER HAS A MORAL DUTY TO BOLSTER HIS RELIGIOUS REASONING AND ARGUMENTS WITH SECULAR REASONS. IN THIS ESSAY, THE AUTHOR ARGUES THAT THERE IS GOOD REASON TO DOUBT THAT INDIVIDUALS HAVE A MORAL DUTY TO REFRAIN FROM EMPLOYING ONLY RELIGIOUS REASONS IN PUBLIC POLITICAL DISCOURSE. IT IS DOUBTFUL THAT INDIVIDUALS HAVE SUCH A RESPONSIBILITY SINCE THE ALLEGED DUTY HAS A CONSEQUENCE THAT WOULD BE EPISTEMICALLY DISASTROUS IF WIDELY ADOPTED AND, MOREOVER, THE ALLEGED DUTY WOULD LIKELY HAVE THE PERNICIOUS EFFORT OF DISCOURAGING POLITICAL PARTICIPATION.

When we say we ''act for a reason'', what do we mean? And what do reasons have to do with being good or bad? Introducing readers to a foundational topic in ethics, Eric Wiland considers the reasons for which we act. You do things for reasons, and reasons in some sense justify what you do. Further, your reasons belong to you, and you know the reasons for which you act in a distinctively first-personal way. Wiland lays out and critically reviews some of the most popular contemporary accounts of how reasons can function in all these ways, accounts such as psychologism, factualism, hybrid theori

According to the democratic interpretation of public reason, political justification ought to appeal to the tacit dimension or common sense of society's actual historical moment. This article claims that a consequence of this interpretation is that religious reasons can be stable public reasons. More specifically, it claims that religious reasons can be public reasons in pervasively religious communities that are democratic, even in circumstances of ongoing social secularization. Three theoretical consequences are derived from this claim: first, democratic public reason assumes more social integration than other interpretations of public reason; second, religious reasons are not always inaccessible to non-believers; and third, religious reasons, when public reasons, can have normative force upon non-believers. Additionally, the following practical implication is made explicit: while justification of state power can appeal to religious reasons only, the law cannot be written in religious terms.