Bryan T. McGraw

Religious parties and the problem of democratic political legitimacy

Thinkers committed to an ideal of public reason are suspicious of religiously informed political activity as it undermines democratic political legitimacy. This paper considers Jürgen Habermas’s recent shifts on this question in light of the history of Europe’s religious parties in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These parties made a real and lasting contribution to Europe’s democratization and their history suggests ways in which Habermas and other defenders of public reason misunderstand the nature of democratic political legitimacy.

Europe's Christian Democratic Parties and American Possibilities

ABSTRACT In this paper, I survey the histories of Europes Christian Democratic parties and suggest that inasmuch as they show that religiously framed party politics can have significant and positive effects on both institutions and supporters, it is difficult to see how those lessons translate straightforwardly to the American social and political order. Even if they did, making a success, both electorally and substantively, of a Christian Democratic movement in the United States would require a degree of statesmanship that certainly seems in short supply these days.

Liberal Multiculturalism and Confessional Religious Schooling

Liberal multiculturalist theories argue for adopting group-specific policies as a means of securing properly liberal ends. Religious groups rarely, if ever, qualify on these accounts. This article suggests that such exclusion is unwarranted in the case of confessional religious schooling, which is meant to inculcate in students a specific set of religious beliefs and behaviors.