Justification and Compromise in Contemporary Democratic Theory about Religion

Contemporary societies are characterized by religious diversity and regularly face disagreements about the proper place of religion in public life and duties of the state and public institutions. In our contribution, we turn to democratic theory and show how it can inform debates about religion and possibilities to deal with conflicts over religion. Our claim is that two democratic theory approaches are especially suitable starting points for this endeavor. One we call the 'justification' centered approach, the other the 'compromise' centered approach. Both approaches have evolved in democratic theory as responses to the more general question of how democracies should legitimately deal with a diversity of viewpoints and clashes between opposing political preferences. Our goal is to show that these two democratic theory approaches propose different ways of dealing with (religious) diversity, which should not be seen as mutually exclusive, but as opportunities to shape democracy's responses to conflicts about religion in a multi-modal way. Recognizing the diversity of democratic theory approaches is therefore of particular importance for systematic attempts to analyze the relation between democratic theory and religion.