Religion on Trial: An essay on Deliberalism

This is a brilliant study of the many instances when religious obligations come into conflict with secular legal principles. In careful case studies of three of those instances – home schooling, circumcision, and divorce – Astrid von Busekist argues that in real life neither the obligations nor the principles are fixed forever, unchanging. She offers a wise argument for pragmatic and contextual resolutions. -Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University   This book examines three distinct modes of interaction between secular law and religious commandments: “separationism,” “composition,” and “cooperation”, and explores how legal practitioners address complex cases through pragmatic reasoning. Its originality lies in grounding the analysis in three real-world scenarios – home-schooling, circumcision, and Jewish divorce (Get) –, each illustrating conflicts between foundational norms belonging to distinct normative frameworks. Rather than asking how liberal constitutionalism should normatively resolve such cases, the author argues that the threshold distinguishing permissible and compatible religious practices must be assessed contextually and pragmatically. The book’s counterintuitive contribution is to demonstrate that, even within the extensively studied field of church-state relations, secularism is a dynamic, evolving practice.   Astrid von Busekist is Professor of Political Theory, and Researcher at the Center for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po, Paris. She is Head of the Political Theory Program, and Editor of Raisons Politiques. She has written extensively on justice, boundaries, nationalism and language policies.