Religious language in the postsecular public sphere: A falsificationist model

Introduction

Norms governing the use of religious language in the public sphere has been a point of disagreement among scholars for a long time. On this question, there exist roughly two camps. On the one hand, inclusionists have argued that excluding religious language from public debate is undemocratic as it a priori excludes a set of arguments, but moreover also causes a moral harm to religious citizens. This is because religion invokes a duty to obey and restrictions force religious citizens to make a choice between their convictions and engagement in public debate. On the other hand, exclusionists argue that the restrictions are necessary as religious language falls into a specific category, such as metaphysical, arational or comprehensive, and cannot be the source of coercive norms that apply to all as they require a commitment to the belief system in question to make sense. Since pluralism requires that a variety of positions should be present in the public sphere, these critics defend the open-endedness of political debate and democratic politics and hold that religious language can harm the public, stifling the political process by serving as a conversation stopper. In between these two camps, there exist a variety of positions, which open up a space for religious language with some caveats. Smith (2014) identifies four more positions in between: weak inclusionism of Rawls and Audi, strong inclusionism of Wolterstorff and Eberle, translation criteria of Habermas and Lafont’s mutual accountability model.

While much ink has been spilled about this issue, in recent years there seems to have occurred a sea change where many assumptions and taken for granted conceptualizations are being challenged. Many scholars (Cooke 2007, 2011; Ferrara 2009; Geoghean 2000; Habermas 2008; Parmaksız 2018) have strived to conceptualize the idea of a postsecular public sphere as distinct from its secular predecessor, where religious language is affirmed and given more symbolic currency. This article is a contribution to this literature and aims to lay the outlines of how we can resolve the question of religious language in relation to these new problematizations. Accordingly, I find that there are four related areas where normative social and political theory’s construal of the secular public sphere can be problematized, which can in turn form the basis for thinking about a postsecular public sphere.

Firstly, the postsecular public sphere ought to problematize the exclusion of religious language’s truth aptness and truth value and consequently problematize what Parmaksız (2018) calls the modern, seculanormative truth regime. ¹ As I explain below, truth and politics is a subject that has created much disagreement, yet the predominant attitude in liberal theoretical discussions has been to exclude truth claims from public argument. For reasons, I elaborate below this exclusion is neither practical nor well-justified.

Secondly, the postsecular public sphere ought to problematize the seculanormative assumption that secular language is able to exhaust religious meaning. This seculanormative conviction is based on the assumption that secular language forms a neutral substratum for all other discourse. Consequently, the postsecular public sphere is sceptical to the claim that all religious reasons can be translated to secular reasons, and whatever cannot be translated is not worthy of public expression. From this postsecular perspective, secularity is a presence in itself rather than the mere absence of religion. This means a denaturalization of the secular.

Thirdly, the postsecular public sphere should problematize the homogenizing essentialization of the categories of religious and the secular, and instead strive to deessentialize, deflate and trivialize these categories, while recognizing their historicity. This means that both categories are to be taken not merely as a set of doctrines or dogmas but also as lived experiences. This allows us to avoid oversimplifications of the religious or secular as categories and converge with the sociological knowledge about the multilayered constitution of religious and secular identity. Essentialist views of the religious and the secular frequently lead to totalizing generalizations that are sociologically unfounded, such as the idea that religious citizens are total citizens or perfect theologians. There is a need to recognize that these people may have different understandings of religiousness, different requirements and levels of commitment. They may relate their religiousness differently with politics, economics or other social relations.

While some scholars (Chambers 2010; Mertel 2018; Stoeckl 2017; Winandy 2015) have highlighted the heterogeneity of religious people against what they view as the homogenizing efforts of scholars, not much has been said about the homogenization of the secular as a category. To speak of secular people in a totalizing sense is as problematic as to speak of the religious in a homogenizing sense. This form of totalization is less visible as, as I indicated previously, there is a strong tendency to think of secularity as merely an absence of the religious. This translates to an obliviousness of the multiple forms being secular can take in the social realm. For instance, one can be a secular in relation to belief or belonging, meaning, they might identify as secular because they do not have any belief in God or have any religious affiliation. This is perhaps the most common-sense explanation and one that is most meaningful in the western world. However, stopping here would be a mistake, as one can be a secular in relation to politics, meaning they might have some belief in God or be a member of a religious group, belief system, either practicing or not, yet they may still hold a conviction that the political sphere needs to be devoid of religion, for various reasons – which may be this-worldly (like discord, animosity) or for religious reasons. For instance, a particular aspect of their belief might require a disengagement from politics as they might perceive politics as corrupting and potentially dangerous for their religious beliefs or communities. Moreover, we need to recognize that not all secular people have the same attitude towards religion.

This variety in the forms of being religious and secular undermines to a large extent the starting point of most normative social and political thinkers’ discussions on religious language in the public sphere. Scholars tend to operate on a specific understanding of the religious and the secular while attempting to outline the contours of a deliberative public sphere. As such, their construal tends to be conditioned by the view of religion and the secular they subscribe to. While sociologists of religion do not have a consensus on how to define religion, let alone an overriding definition of religion, normative social and political theorists are comfortable using broad brushes and operating with a particular understanding of religion or unproblematically favouring particular theological interpretations over others. ²

Lastly, very much related to the third point, there is a tendency to think of the categories of the secular and the religious as exclusive and exhaustive. In terms of exclusivity, many social and political theorists tend to operate on the assumption that these categories are mutually exclusive and are in a zero-sum game, that is, someone is either religious or secular, and not both. However, sociological evidence shows that what we quite often come across are people who are in flux and many lie somewhere in between, in a fluid state (Voas 2009). Some of these fluid subjects operate on a compartmentalization of life, creating various spaces where being religious or secular makes sense and in others it does not. Therefore, they are able to disconnect and compartmentalize their judgment from their convictions in different contexts. ³ In terms of exhaustiveness, we tend to think that these two categories, or their combinations, can exhaust the potential positions within the realm of belief and unbelief. This binary opposition is more and more sociologically undefendable and there is a need to go beyond these categories, and their supposed exhaustiveness or comprehensiveness. We need a new terminology that would queer the secular and religious as categories. Just as gender is able to cover both masculinity and femininity, and at the same time go beyond these, there is the need of a term that can cover both religious and secular while going beyond them and making it possible to think of options and possibilities that cannot be reduced to or explained in terms of both. ⁴

While these four areas constitute a starting point for the construction of a postsecular public sphere, it does not mean that there is nothing to preserve from the idea of the secular public sphere. I hold that the postsecular public sphere is one where seculanormative assumptions and essentialist constructions are abandoned, not in favour of an unreflexive appreciation or return of the religious, but rather for their potentially problematic exclusions and empirical fallaciousness. While having shortcomings, we must recognize that secularization as a political and social process has in facilitating the construction of the modern public sphere opened up a space for nonreligious arguments and justifications. In the secular public sphere, no rule or norm is taken as given or natural, and even those norms that are exalted to sacred status, such as human rights jurisdiction, have their seat in the immanent processes of political negotiation. In that, the secular public sphere is defined by a sense of openness and political immanentism. ⁵ It is this political immanentism that the postsecular public sphere ought to preserve and inherit. In this sense, the postsecular critique is a secularization of the secular, that is, bringing the concept back to Earth as a thing of this world, understanding it as the product of immanent social relations and thereby directing its critical power onto itself. In that, I take postsecular critique to be a metasecular exercise.

Undoubtedly, the above identified four problematizations bring up many difficult issues and questions. Yet in this article, I will focus on the place of religious language and arguments in the public sphere and, building on these insights, defend a falsificationist model which I believe not only forms a middle ground in between the exclusionist and inclusionist positions (as many others have argued for) but also goes beyond them in some respects to overcome the above-mentioned problematizations. In the first section, following from my first insight, I examine the relation of truth, politics and public debate. My argument is that truth cannot be completely eradicated from the public sphere as it has a defining, vital and operational role in politics. This is not to say that every participant in the public sphere cares about truth. Rather, it is to say that truth as a challenge is always implanted in debate and discussion, and normative political and social theory must take this into account rather than try to avoid it. In the second section, following my second and third insights, I shift my focus to the question of religious language. I focus on religion’s capacity to have truth value and examine whether religion and religious discourse should be treated as ‘special’. In the third section, I explore the political implications of a postsecular public sphere that moves away from seculanormative and religionormative assumptions. I argue that on the level of linguistic discourse, we need to adopt a ‘falsificationist’ strategy that originates from democratic respect for our peers in public debate. Hence, it is important that the public sphere is open to all forms of language for reasons of respect and equality of all. However, I also agree that no form of expression and language should be a conversation stopper and that there are legitimate reasons, democratic respect and the equal worth of all, for the enforcement of some restrictions intended to prolong and preserve the open-endedness of political debate. To achieve both these ends, I argue that we ought to allow any citizen of any self-identification the right to use the language of their choice in the public sphere, provided that they also provide in their preferred language ‘conditions of falsifiability’, that is, those circumstances upon which the speaking party would accept their argumentation as void.

Truth in politics and public debate

‘Nowadays we are unlikely to accept in an unvarnished form the idea that truth can or should be the aim of political activity’ declares Newey (2009, 82). It is difficult to disagree with this statement. In our post-poststructuralist milieu, along with the death of God and the death of the Subject, it seems only reasonable to accept the death of Truth. In the eyes of many intellectuals, caring about truth and defending its value is akin to re-establishing an intellectual ancien régime on the shoulders of a Lazarus. Lynch (2004, 1) for instance notes that ‘cynicism about truth and related notions like objectivity and knowledge has become the semiofficial philosophical stance of many academic disciplines’. This cynicism is not only the result of the predominance of the anti-foundationalist spirit that afflicts academia. In the last century, truth as a notion has come under siege both by its proponents and adversaries. Philosophy in the analytical and continental traditions has problematized the concept to such an extent that its dignity has been fundamentally tainted. As a result of the linguistic turn, it has been problematized to the extent that not only a multiplication of the meaning of the concept has occurred but also a fundamental questioning of whether or not there is a nature of truth altogether is taking place. This philosophical probing has been accompanied in social and political theory by a postmodern questioning of metanarratives and the poststructuralist problematization of the relationship between truth and power, which has in turn, rightly so, contested the innocence of the concept.

In Europe, post-war European political thought has been to a large extent a polemic against the Platonic tradition. The experience of fascism and the disenchantment from socialism have produced a more pragmatic vision of politics. Thinkers, such as Arendt, Berlin and Popper, have defended the open-endedness of political life, critiquing what they see as the stopping/stifling power of metaphysics and truth. ⁶ Misak (2009, 30) captures the spirit of these anxieties very well when she lists two main reasons, one theoretical and the other practical, as to why many think truth as a notion should not have any place in the political public sphere. According to Misak, the first objection is that truth necessitates a commitment to a realist ontology, which cannot be applied in politics, and the second reason is that truth when introduced into politics is dangerous as it has a holistic, all-subsuming nature that eliminates all other potentialities. Both these reasons originate from a desire to avoid the metaphysical tradition that has since Plato attributed a transcendent status to truth. Although it is now not common to defend a purely Platonic view of truth as transcendence, the debate around truth still operates roughly along similar lines, questioning whether truth is an immanent or transcendent notion.

The disengagement from the metaphysical tradition has had two main lines, those who assert that truth, in line with language, is a socially determined notion, making the idea of context independence impossible, and those who think that some unconditionality is possible even with contextuality. On the sceptics’ side, inspired by Nietzsche’s insights into the role of metaphor in language, radical pragmatic thinkers, such as Rorty (1988, 1998), assert the contextual social realm as the seat and criteria of truth, which in turn makes unconditionality impossible. Foucault, taking a broader perspective, questions the relationship of power and truth. By historicizing the concept, Foucault (Foucault and Faubion 2000, 131) recasts it as a ‘thing of this world’, rather than something that exists a priori.

While the idea of a metaphysical truth has been greatly discredited through its historicization and the concept has been brought back to Earth, to some this scepticism when radicalized represents the opening of a door that can lead to a permanent slide into the abyss of relativism. As such, some social pragmatists have defended the view that, without construing transcendence and from within immanent reality, we can deduce some context transcending conditions, which can form a basis for deliberation with a truth concern. Habermas (2000, 113) has asserted that, while we cannot get outside of language to compare ‘linguistic expressions with a piece of uninterpreted’ reality, unconditionality is possible as it is enshrined in the immanent everyday processes that define human engagement with each other. For Rorty (1988), such unconditionality is nothing other than a ‘backsliding into metaphysics’.

While I do not intend or attempt to resolve these multilayered debates about the concept and present a better understanding of truth, I argue that the above described developments have created what Parmaksız (2018) refers to as the ‘seculanormative truth-regime’, which has two dimensions: firstly, truth, along with metaphysics is to be removed from public deliberation, and secondly, secular language is able to exhaust religious meaning and thereby truth, by forming a neutral substratum.

With respect to the first dimension, we need to note that truth still plays an important role that cannot be ignored by political theorists. Contrary to the general trend in philosophy, the cynicism that surrounds truth does not correspond to the reality of those who occupy public spheres where it is still esteemed as being relevant. ⁷ In other words, it is debatable whether the notion has really been expulsed from the public sphere because of a common-sense conviction in its futility and danger or rather it has been expulsed from the realm of political theory due to an anxiety regarding its potential for breeding violence and conflict. As such, in concord with others (Cohen 2009; Cooke 2011; Misak 2009), I hold that we need to bring truth back into political theory more forcefully, not only as a concept to analyse, criticise, be wary of, and in the process recognize its interconnectedness with power, but also as a notion that has great presence in everyday life and engagement, which therefore must be accommodated rather than brushed under the rug.

Turning back to Misak’s (2009) diagnosis, one response to the practical criticism is that keeping truth out of politics because of its divisiveness all together puts us into a more dangerous position as it risks degenerating into an abyss of nothingness. As much as I agree and see this as being possible, I find that this response has its limitations. As Nietzsche and his followers assert, the move away from truth does not necessarily imply a negative nihilism and the idea that such a move is inherently destructive is greatly exaggerated. Yet, it is also true that this dreadful possibility is something that proponents of keeping truth out of politics should be considering.

Conceptually, Misak (2009, 31) provides a stronger argument when she asserts that without truth politics does not make sense. This is a more robust reason as to why we should be incorporating truth and its vocabulary into politics, as it means that it is already always present in the public realm. As Misak points out, based on Price’s (2003: 170) analysis, giving up truth would be tantamount to ‘reducing the conversation of mankind to a chatter of disengaged monologues’, a sort of ‘global waiting for Godot’. Cohen (2009, 13), following a similar yet more general line, argues that truth ‘is deeply rooted in our thought and reasoning’ and therefore we cannot do away with it.

These arguments point at the specific function that truth has in the realm of politics. I think we can understand this role under two headings. The first of these is that truth gives statements mass, transforming them from hollow, fleeting away sounds into things that matter in the world, with a staying power, the capacity to hurt, intrigue and impress. It gives politics traction and as Price (2003, 169) succinctly puts it ‘truth is the grit that makes individual opinions engage with one another’. In that respect, ironically, we can think of the Nietzschean objection against truth because of its life stifling function as being similar to the dove, described by Kant, who faced with the resistance of thin air, imagines that her movements would be far more free in airless space, whereas in reality the air is what enables it to fly in the first place. Secondly, apart from this embeddedness, Cohen (2009) points out another reason, related to the one above, as to why truth cannot be fully exorcised out of politics. In response to the argument that truth may not always be assumed or implied in public discourse, Cohen (2009, 18) argues that ‘even if not taken as or presented in that context as true, [statements] might be judged true by religious or moral doctrine affirmed by a citizen’. This is because our statements, whether we intend it or not, acquire an independent status once they are made public and any of our peers can problematize them as truth-apt. In other words, even if we do not see or attribute any truth to our discourses, some truth can be ascribed on to them by others. This means that the question of truth is unavoidable when thought in a political context, because to the extent that we are exposed to the gaze of the other, truth may always spur out of the most unexpected recontextualizations, forcing itself onto us. This is especially true for societies where there is diversity in forms of life as the more difference exists the more likely it is for truth as a problem to emerge. I hold that this is key to understanding and contextualizing truth in relation to politics as it makes it necessary to problematize truth in relation to the Other and not merely as a philosophical object.

Religious language and political debate

Undoubtedly, the core of this debate on politics and truth has been the place of religious language in the public sphere. Eberle’s (2008) overview and discussion of the relationship between religion and political theory is useful to illuminate some of the major issues that arise around liberal political philosophy’s approach to religion and politics.

Eberle (2008) asserts, following Strauss, that liberal political philosophy understands the ‘problem’ about religion and politics essentially as the problem of legitimate political authority and state coercion. As such the fundamental question, the ‘theologo-political problem’ in Strauss’ terminology, that it seeks to answer is, ‘given that state-authorized coercion needs to be justified, and that the justification of state coercion requires the consent of the people, what role may religious reasons play in justifying state coercion?’. In what Eberle refers to as the ‘doctrine of religious restraint’ (DRR hereafter), liberal political philosophy, he argues, has responded to this problem by positing an asymmetry between religious and secular reasons, and thereby has envisaged certain restrictions on the use of religious language in the public sphere. Accordingly, while some liberal political thinkers have given religious reasons some acceptance, in matters that relate to state coercion, liberal political philosophy has defended a normative framework that ascribes moral restraint on the participants of the debate to refrain from solely relying on religious reasons.

Eberle observes that these restrictions are defended by their proponents in three ways: the argument from religious warfare, the argument from divisiveness and the argument from respect. Both the argument from religious warfare and the argument from divisiveness rest on the idea that non-restraint and the presence of religious reasons lead to discord threatening peace and social harmony, and thereby the healthy workings of the public sphere. With respect to the first, Eberle notes Audi’s (2000, 103) objection to religious reasons which highlights the possibility that there might occur ‘a clash of Gods vying for social control’ with the danger that ‘such uncompromising absolutes easily lead to destruction and death’. Eberle (2008) interprets this objection as pointing to the possibility of conflict based on a ‘sectarian agenda’ and the use of the state to ‘enact stringent moral laws’. In a similar way, the argument from divisiveness is built on the idea that ‘a coercive law that cannot be justified except on religious grounds’ will lead to ‘anger and frustration on the part of those coerced’ which would ‘breed division between citizens’ (Eberle, 2008). In that sense, it is very similar to the warfare argument, but rather focuses on the threats to solidarity. Both, the argument from warfare and divisiveness, are arguments for peace, and they posit religious truth as a threat to peace and solidarity.

Both defences of the DRR are plausible. As Martin Luther about five centuries ago famously made clear with the words ‘peace if possible, truth at all costs’, religious truths can lead to violence and destruction. One only needs to pay attention to the current world affairs to see how sectarian differences can still motivate violence and divisiveness in modern times. It is also true that governments controlled by religiously minded politicians can use state power to further their vision of religious piety.

However, as Eberle points out, both arguments are also problematic as they can also be used to support the presence of religion (and truth) in the public sphere. If the ultimate goal is to preserve peace and avoid violence, then to the extent that religious reasons can be utilized to undermine civil strife, promote solidarity and peace, it seems reasonable to not only allow them in the public sphere but also to encourage them. As such the argument from warfare and divisiveness, while plausible do not provide sufficient reason to exclude religion per se. What seems to be at dispute is not whether there should not be religious warfare or an essentially divided public, but rather if religion essentially promotes warfare, civil strife and divisiveness. For some who support DRR, the risk of civil strife by allowing religious reasons is too high, while for others the risk is little, which can be managed, or none at all. Moreover, we need to note that the argument of divisiveness and discohort is problematic as they rest on an essentialist view of religious and secular language. Such essentialist views tend to ignore the internal diversity and multiplicity of these forms of language. ⁸

The last reason, argument from respect, is the more theoretically robust of the objections. It operates on the liberal principle that coercive laws need to be justified to all as ‘a morally legitimate law cannot be such that there are those to whom it cannot be justified’ (Eberle, 2008). The argument from respect is relevant to both inclusionists and exclusionists. Exclusionists argue that religious reasons cannot be justified to people who do not subscribe to that religion therefore they are not admissible in public debate. On the other hand, inclusionists argue that excluding religious language is tantamount to excluding these citizens as they are bound by a duty to obey their religious convictions.

Those who are against the inclusion of religion predominantly argue and follow in this line that religion by its nature relies on metaphysical arguments that cannot be verified or accepted by all and therefore should be kept out of public discourse. Hume (2000) famously made the empiricist case against all discourse about God when he declared that all works of religion and metaphysics, because they are neither about logical relations between ideas nor empirically related to facts, should be thrown ‘to the fire: for it contains nothing but sophistry and illusions’. More recently, Ayer’s (2002) early Wittgenstein inspired logical positivism represents a modern version of this argument. This strongly empiricist and scientistic dismissal of religious language has resonated even with some theologians, such as Van Buren (1963), and still continues to do so with many humanist critics of religion in our contemporary societies.

Yet not all thinkers have taken such a radical view towards religious language and there have been attempts to incorporate religious reasons into public discourse. However, as I argue below, these attempts have fallen short of appreciating truth and have put undue restrictions on religious language. Among these positions, Rawls’ is the most prominent and one of the most complicated. While Rawls follows the doctrine of religious restraint, as he finds the use of religious reasons in justification of state coercion problematic, his approach is nuanced. Firstly, Rawls (1993, 442) adopts a limited restriction stance and argues that the restrictions on religious reasons apply to ‘constitutional essentials and principles of basic justice’. Secondly, Rawls holds that religious reasons can be used in public debate provided that in due course some secular reasons are also provided. Referred to as the proviso, this arrangement gives, to a certain extent, those religious citizens who insist on providing religious reasons the opportunity to speak as they wish. Thirdly, Rawls’ scheme operates with a second categorization that crosscuts the secular and religious divide, that is, the separation between comprehensive doctrines and non-comprehensive reasons. Accordingly, Rawls holds that some secular yet comprehensive doctrines, such as socialism and utilitarianism, may also be excluded from public debate on the constitutional essentials and justice. Hence, Rawlsian political liberalism envisages an overarching normative framework that can set some restrictions on secular reasons as well.

The exclusion of religious truth in Rawlsian political liberalism has been very well captured in Raz’s (1990) influential critique. According to Raz (1990, 4), what makes Rawls’ political liberalism significant is that it suggests ‘that certain truths should not be taken into account because, though true, they are of an epistemic class unsuited for public life’. For Rawls (1993, 447), ‘political liberalism views [the] insistence on the whole truth in politics as incompatible with democratic citizenship and the idea of legitimate laws’. Here, Rawls makes a separation between ‘whole truth’ and other reasons, which rests on the distinction that he makes between comprehensive doctrines and political reasons. Both of these exclusions constitute what Raz refers to as ‘epistemic abstinence’.

The core of this separation is found in the distinction between metaphysical and political, and it is possible to see that this distinction, which serves as the foundation of Rawls’ approach to religion and truth, rests on Kantian epistemological foundations. Kant’s critique of pure reason effectively delegated many ontological matters to the realm of metaphysics of which no final epistemological conclusion could be reached. As a result, these matters are extracted from the subject of proper philosophical inquiry and placed in the realm of belief and private conscience. In a similar fashion, Rawls delegates certain truth-claims, claims that relate to ‘whole truths’, into the private sphere and divorces them from the political realm, because essentially there is no rational and epistemic toolset to settle these questions. Comprehensive doctrines which claim access to the ‘whole truth’ fall into the metaphysical category as they seek to totalize and present a unified picture of reality. Rawls holds that ‘burdens of judgment’ makes it impossible for individuals to have such a complete view as ‘in a modern society’ complex social divisions deprives citizens of the same ‘total experience’ of life.

As the above discussion demonstrates, while there are recent efforts to incorporate truth into liberal political theory, liberal deliberative thinkers have predominantly taken a sceptical view towards the presence of religious truth in politics and have defended a partial acceptance. In their model, religious reasons and language are of an epistemic category that is not suitable to have a place in public reason. This has created the assumption that secular language is able to exhaust religious meaning, or whatever it cannot say has no place in politics.

On the other hand, there have also been efforts to provide a positive view on religious language. As Hook (1961, xii) notes ‘it was Wittgenstein who, in a sense, released the theologians from the ban which his earlier work had helped to pronounce on them’. By freeing the question of meaning from empirical verifiability through an emphasis on use value, theologians found in Wittgenstein’s later writings an opening that could be employed to reinstate some dignity to religious language. Following this opening, some have argued that religious language is meaningful and can tell us about the world. Barbour (1974), in his analysis of religious myths, argues that they ‘presuppose some sort of truth-claims which can be examined’. Ferre, similarly, rejects attempts to ‘relegate all religious statements into the truth-valueless category’ for three reasons: (1) ‘acognitivism is unnecessary since attitudes and actions are subject to critical demands as are matters of fact’, (2) ‘the non-cognitive forsaking of truth-value of religious language is irresponsible as religious commitments have consequences that demand critical examination’ and (3) ‘it is dangerous as one’s life choices affects the lives of others’ (Geisler 1973, 170). While I recognize the validity of the last two reasons, I find the first one to be more fundamental regarding the truth value of religious language. The last two reasons are indirect challenges that highlight the negative effects of ignoring religious language that many non-cognivists may agree with for political reasons. However, the first one by pointing out attitudes and actions draws out that there is a cognitive and social dimension to religious statements that locates truth in a social context in relation to the Other.

In the light of the above discussion, I think that the first question that needs to be addressed is whether or not bringing truth value of religious language into the equation necessitates a special treatment of religion. In other words, there is a need to address whether there is anything unique or essential about religion that requires that we approach its presence in the public sphere differently.

On the theoretical dimension, the debate around the place of religion in the public sphere has predominantly focused on the extent to which the presence of religious language in justification of public norms can be allowed (Audi and Wolterstorff 1997; Habermas 2008; Rawls 1993). At this level, both sides of the argument, that is the exclusionists and inclusionists, have to a large extent relied on the essentialist premise that religious citizens form a unique relationship with their religious language.

Those who are supportive of including religion in the public sphere against exclusionists argue that norms implied by publicness are inherently biased against the religious as they demand a split of one’s religious belief/convictions from one’s personhood. Barbour (1974, 7) for instance takes religion to ‘encourage allegiance to a way of life and adherence to policies of action…demands existential involvement of the whole person’. Wolterstorff (Audi and Wolterstorff 1997), similarly, notes that religion for many is indispensable while making political considerations. In that by asking a religious person to keep their religious justifications out of the public sphere, we are also asking a separation between one’s religious beliefs and arguments, and this creates an extra-burden on the religious people that is not applicable for the secular. Although I sympathize with the inclusionist side, I find this extra-burden argument flawed.

This is because the extra-burden argument is based on an essentialist view of both the secular and the religious and it ignores the complexity of the many different forms of religiosity and secularity that modernity has given birth to. It is built on a crude religionormative dichotomy between the religious and the secular, where the religious is portrayed as deep, profound, substantial and vital to one’s whole identity, and the secular as superficial, transient, one-dimensional and pleasuristic. ⁹ Accordingly, it is assumed that the secular citizen does not exhibit the same kind of commitment to their convictions and can disconnect herself from her arguments and beliefs whereas the religious cannot. Simply put secular and religious selves form different relationships with their discourse.

A postsecular public sphere cannot operate on such assumptions stemming from essentialist understandings of secular and religious, which lead us to make assumptions about religious or secular citizens that are sociologically unfounded. As a result, the postsecular public sphere also needs to challenge some commonly held assumptions about the religious. For instance, the idea that religion is special and that religious people are ‘total’ citizens (Mertel 2018), in the sense that they are not able to divorce themselves from their religious convictions, that is, that their political identity is necessarily built on their religious identity. For some secularists, this is a good reason to exclude religious convictions from public discourse as these citizens are not truly open to having their convictions challenged as religion pertains to their core identity, whereas for others this is a good reason to include religious convictions in public sphere, as excluding them means excluding these people.

Instead of arguing that it is possible and necessary for the religious to disconnect their selves from their religion – which is possible as surveys (Inglehart et al. 2014) show that there are people who identify as religious however do not think that religion should have an essential place in politics – I argue that the assumption that the secular may do so easily is largely mistaken. The history of science shows us very clearly that even in terms of scientific disputes, natural scientists, whom we would expect to be most open-minded about their arguments about reality, when faced with empirical evidence that strongly challenges their convictions, can be very conservative and not willing to dispose of a theory. Philosophers of science, such as Kuhn, have developed new theories of scientific development based on criticism of such rigidity. ¹⁰ In this sense, I hold that there is nothing peculiar or special about the religious with respect to the difficulty of separating oneself from the arguments that one puts forward in debate. Once we enlarge our view to include the diversity of the different ways religious and secular subjects form with their convictions and discourse, then the extra-burden argument becomes less plausible. ¹¹ For some religious and secular citizens, the norms set may mean no extra-burdens, while for others, including seculars, it may. Therefore, we can conclude that it is not being religious or secular that makes the difference in burdens but rather how one is religious or secular.

Having discussed at some length the relation of truth to politics and truth value of religious language, I now turn my attention to the more specific question of how we should construe postsecular public spaces if we are to overcome seculanormative and religionormative assumptions.

The falsificationist model

One could argue that given the above discussion what makes sense is to put no restrictions on the use of language in the public sphere, something of a laissez-faire approach (Fish 1999). However, a laissez-faire approach to the question of admissibility and justification could lead to the public sphere being a sphere of declarations rather than deliberation and argumentation. Without any norms that secure the effectiveness of the process of argumentation and communication, the dignity of all participants is put in question.

If everything goes is not a good option, then the question becomes how we can converse with someone (religious or secular) that is so strongly convicted. Rorty (1994) famously argued that religion must be kept private as outside of its community of adherents, it does not have meaning and is therefore a ‘conversation stopper’. For Rorty when someone makes a statement originating from their religious beliefs, there is not much to say in response. ¹² I have already stated that such an approach that limits the meaning of religious discourse to the personal is limiting. On the other hand, Rorty and many others such as Arendt, Popper and Berlin do have a valid point. Public debate should not be shut off and closed off with a take it or leave it attitude. Therefore, a postsecular public sphere would have to make arrangements that would allow for the continuation of debate.

One way of achieving this would be by allowing only arguments that are verifiable. I find that this is not a good criterion to judge the admissibility of religious discourse. This is not only because religious language can speak about more than just that which is verifiable but also because verifiability in itself is not a criterion that works very well even with science where questions are usually of empirical nature. This is not to say that verifiability is not meaningful, but that it cannot be enforced strictly and it can do more harm than it does good to public debate.

However, in order for debate to be more than a series of declarations and descriptions, whether religious or secular, it is a prerequisite that the other needs to be able to challenge one’s claims. This is a practical necessity. In other words, there is no debate if the other does not have a chance to demonstrate that our line of thinking, statements and/or arguments are problematic and not credible. This means that if a particular language is functioning as a conversation stopper, then the responsibility predominantly lies with the initiator to open up the dialogue, rather than parties retreating into their own respective corners, agreeing to disagree as a modus vivendi.

But apart from this practical necessity, there is also a political reason as to why this is necessary which is just as important. I think that not giving any chance to our peers to demonstrate us wrong is a refusal of their equal status. It denies them their status as a peer and renders them as mere fixtures of a public, without any agency. Only to the extent that they accept our assertions can they reclaim their status as subjects and through such an act, ironically, declare their own subjugation. Just as dismissing religious language because it is religious can be disrespectful and hurtful to some religious people, the positing of arguments that the other has no chance to demonstrate as problematic can be just as hurtful as it refuses to recognize the other as an equal worthy of debate. Such an attitude creates an asymmetrical relation where one party is dictating the other with the expectation that the other will take everything as granted due to the fact that they are speaking from a higher, more authoritative ground.

I hold that this problem can be overcome by adopting a broad falsificationist strategy. This means that participants of the debate present their arguments with their own ‘conditions of falsification’ – the conditions under which they would consider their statements falsified. Here, I am using ‘falsifiability’ not exclusively as empirical falsifiability as implied by Popper and as applied to religion by Flew (2000), but more broadly as the fulfilment of any condition that might perform the role of convincing someone the problematic nature of their statements. This may be empirical falsification, logical incoherence, structural inconsistency or any other form that is deemed suitable for this purpose by the speaker. ¹³

At this point, it is necessary to recognize that conditions of falsification cannot rely on the truth of that which they are meant to be the condition of falsifying. Some theologians, for instance, have argued that everything in religion is eschatologically verifiable as when we die and in time we will know if there is a God, heaven and hell. The problem with these is that they are built on the assumption of the truth of the assertions themselves to justify their verifiability or falsifiability. In other words, we need to accept that there is an ‘afterlife’ for us to be able to understand these assertions as verifiable or falsifiable. As such, such conditions of falsification cannot be considered as legitimate.

This strategy does not demand a dramatic change in the self-understanding of the speaker, but it requires an attitude that finds the question ‘how can I make you change your mind?’ legitimate and meaningful. This change of mind may include policy matters or philosophical/ideological standing that justifies those policies. Such a change in attitude is an important change as what essentially stops conversations are participants’ unwillingness to overcome the ambiguity in discourse and question, rather than the ambiguity itself. This model would allow parties to the debate to provide their own standards of falsifiability, and by transferring the responsibility of presenting these standards of falsification, it also attributes a responsibility to which they would be bound to, which can only be broken through self-contradiction and denial. By providing conditions of falsifiability, the speaker demonstrates respect to the other and a commitment to the argumentative process by putting their own consistency on the line.

This model has some advantages over the predominant seculanormative inclusionist models which have posited the supremacy of public reason, as in the case of Rawls (1993), with the proviso that public reasons should be provided in due course, or as suggested by Habermas (2008), by translating the religious into the secular. I find that translation is a practically useful method of overcoming some difficulties if all parties are satisfied that the translation reflects the spirit of the original discourse. In that sense, there is nothing wrong with it to the extent that this precondition is achieved. However, translation is also a seculanormative model as it construes secular language as being capable of capturing religious language but not vice versa. On the contrary, translation may, due to the complexities of the process itself leave out certain aspects of a discourse – aspects which may be important to the speaker and/or to the audience. The broad falsificationist perspective that I am defending allows for the religious (and others) to retain and express themselves in their preferred language while also providing a ground for others to criticize it.

Another advantage of this scheme is that it gives the owners of the statements an initial control or power over the interpretation that such statements can take. In other words, by providing conditions of falsifiability, the speaker provides a frame in which to approach the arguments in question, and thereby, empowers herself with respect to the audience. This is important as it provides an incentive for participants to engage in debate rather than refrain from it by providing some level of seclusion.

Lastly, this is a model that does not start out with a preconceived understanding of the secular and the religious and does not essentialize a secular and religious dichotomy. It does not assume, as in the case of translation, anything about religious or secular discourse. It applies to both equally and condemns both if they fail to provide ‘conditions of falsifiability’.

This model is certainly not perfect as falsification comes with its problems as well. The ‘conditions of falsification’ may themselves be in need of some falsification, or the conditions of falsification outlined may in themselves be challenged. But, these in themselves do not shut down the argument but on the contrary further open it up. Once we are committed to this principle of broad falsification, then we would be conscious of the conditions we set for falsification and would therefore be inclined to make sure that they do not lead to an infinite regress. If this process leads to a perpetual regress where the conditions of falsification themselves need to be reconsidered, then the parties of the debate can direct their criticism to the attitude and intention of the speaker.

The model that I have outlined here is not necessarily exclusionary of other models. Other principles such as verification and translation can be employed as an alternative or used to supplement the falsificationist model if parties to the debate do not problematize their usage. However, in cases where there is no agreement in principles, the broad falsificationist model provides a minimum that would need to be observed because it is based on the understanding of equal worth of every individual in debate which is the foundation of democratic politics.

The falsificationist approach I defend here is different from the ‘doctrine of religious restraint’ and its Rawlsian version in several ways. The first difference has to do with how liberal political theory has problematized religion. As a response to Eberle’s discussion of the ‘theologico-political’ problem, one can ask as to what extent the political authority and religion problem is unique. In other words, is there a difference between being coerced by the state based on religious reasons and being coerced by the state based on nonreligious reasons, provided that both are based on a process of justification and consented debate? It is worth thinking as to how the question Eberle poses us is different from the question ‘what role may any reason play in justifying state coercion?’.

When one looks at the evolution of the institutional relationship between state authority and church in Western Europe, undoubtedly it is possible to see that one important leg of secularization has been the limitations put on the power of the church over political matters and the empowerment of nonreligious reasons in the political sphere. In this respect, liberal political philosophy’s effort to legitimize political authority by reference to an immanent process, ‘the social contract’, is the quintessential example of the kind of paradigmatic shift that occurred at the start of modernity. Hence, Strauss’ narrative of secularization as the decline of the political authority of religion is historically appropriate and important. However, to what extent this history should be the starting point for an examination of the relationship between religion and politics is questionable.

DRR is conditioned by the ‘theologico-political’ problem it aims to resolve. In other words, to the extent that the problem to be resolved is identified as the problem of legitimate authority and religion, we run the risk of subscribing to essentialist categories of what the religious and the secular are, rather than approaching these as lived experiences that are subject to change and transformation. As such depending on our concept of religion, either as essentially metaphysical, potentially divisive worldview (Rawls), or as a positive, meaning giving quasi-essential human enterprise (Taylor), or a more instrumental, functionalist perspective that sees it as conducive to solidarity but potentially problematic to the extent that it speaks about non-solidaristic value (Habermas), the solution to the problem changes and differs.

In contrast, the model I defend does not take for granted the secular and religious language separation as the starting point for the regulation of reasons in the public sphere, mostly because the falsificationist approach is sceptical to the claim that secular language is capable of exhausting religious language. It accepts that there might be residues of meaning that translation or any other transformation process cannot exhaust. As a consequence, the falsificationist model does not envisage restraint in the form of a duty to provide secular reasons for one’s religious reasons to support a particular public policy. Rather, it encourages the use of one’s preferred language as it sees the potential disclosure of meaning in a particular language as a contribution to the public debate.

The second major difference, which follows from the discussion above, is that the falsificationist model does not divide the public sphere into two realms – one in which religion and truth can play a role and one in which they cannot. For Rawls, this separation manifests itself as the distinction between official and unofficial public spheres, whereas Habermas opts for a division between the formal and informal public spheres. The model I defend takes a unified view towards the public sphere and does not limit the use of religious language specifically to a single realm. Falsificationism applies to all politics related debates whether they take place in a formal or informal setting.

This stance stems from two reasons. Firstly, it is based on the view that the coercive influence of power is not limited to state power. If the ‘theologico-political’ question is to alert us to the problematic coercive power of religion, by focusing solely on state coercion, we risk ignoring or diminishing the coercive and dominative power of religion in everyday life and practices. In other words, I do not think that the religion and politics ‘problem’ can be fully dealt with only by focusing on the question of political authority and state coercion. While state coercion is definitely an important aspect, it is also important to think about the prevalence and power of religious norms infused into social and cultural life. Liberal political theory by focusing on state power and coercion has to a large extent under appreciated the pervasiveness of power in everyday relations and its capacity for domination through non-state instruments. As such, in this work, I have emphasized the power of religious norms as manifesting in cultural and social norms. Secondly, as I have previously explained, the use of reasons that cannot be falsified positions the participants in the debate in a category that deprives them of their subjectivity. The falsificationist model sees no essential difference between this denial taking place in formal or informal public spheres.

Thirdly, unlike the DDR, the weak falsificationist model does not envisage consensus as its fundamental aim. Falsificationist model is not a model of justification. Hence, it does not envisage using reasons that are acceptable to all or refraining from metaphysical arguments. It does not concern itself with the question of what constitutes a religious or secular reason or a comprehensive or political reason. Different from DRR, the weak falsificationist approach does not require that one must have reasonable secular reasons to support their views, but only that they provide some extra, supportive reasons in their preferred language as to how the other participants of the debate can demonstrate that their arguments are not acceptable. To use Raz’s terminology, it does not require any self-regulation in the form of an epistemic abstinence, but it requires contentive elaboration.

Conclusion

The falsificationist model I defend here intends to show that an affirmation of truth and an openness to its presence in the public sphere does not necessarily mean an overwhelming of the public sphere by religious truths and the end to democratic politics through violence and divisiveness. Secondly, the falsificationist model rejects the seculanormative hierarchy of languages, and its consequence that secular language forms the neutral substratum that all other language can speak in. Thirdly, the falsificationist model rejects the seculanormative or religionormative essentializations of the religious and the secular. It does not operate on a particular understanding of religion or secular, nor does it deny the internal heterogeneity of these categories. Furthermore, it questions the exclusivity and comprehensiveness of these terms and rather seeks to understand them as historical categories that have come about through a process of social and political construction.

I justify my falsificationist model not as a necessity of rationality but rather a necessity that originates from the recognition of each participant in the public debate as worthy and equals. ¹⁴ Both the inclusionists and exclusionists affirm this idea when they affirm or deny religious discourse any place in the public sphere. It is this idea that motivates me to conclude that religious language, as any other language, has a right to be present in the public sphere as it is. Yet, it is also this basic point that makes me conclude that introducing arguments into the public sphere, which the other cannot refute, is an announcement of asymmetry and inequality. To the extent that one is committed to the equality of all in the public sphere, which is implied in the idea of the public sphere, this falsificationist model provides a venue through which parties can appreciate the virtues of the public sphere.

The falsificationist model that I am proposing may be interpreted as being too unrealistic. I should clarify that I do not envisage policing our speech, but rather it is a regulative principle that could guide us when we run into conflict. It would also be fair to judge its merits in comparison to its alternatives.