Berkley Center

Author Timothy Shah’s historical inquiry seeks to answer two questions: 1) To what extent is there a characteristically liberal response to the challenge of religious pluralism and 2) To the extent that such a liberal response exists, has it been adequate? Shah analyzes Hugo Grotius and John Rawls’s responses to religious pluralism. The problem in both Grotius and Rawls’s approach is that they attempt to make the world safe for liberalism but not for religious pluralism. The solution to the tension between liberalism and religious pluralism is a more open and democratic politics, which avoids the pitfalls of the strategy of liberal containment, since this is as likely to produce the radicalization of religion as its pacification.