Modern Age - Winter 2016 - 95

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN THE DOCK

On the contrary, it denies that "modern scientific methods are
objective," and thus provides "an ideologically neutral basis" for
"public consensus."
Confessional pluralism recognizes that people are "divided by
fundamental differences in underlying faiths and commitments,
some of which have nontheistic naturalism as their starting points
and some of which have various forms of theism and openness to
the supernatural as their starting points." A healthy society must
be "built around the recognition that varieties of viewpoints,
including varieties of both religious and secular viewpoints, exist
and ought to be included in a genuine pluralism" (167).
Given the irreducible pluralism of worldviews, how could people
collaborate in a common social order? Kuyper's answer was that
although "as a result of human sinfulness, people were sharply
divided as to their first commitments," as creatures of God "they
also shared some important elements of common rationality and
moral sensibilities" that made it possible for them to discover
"shared principles on which all can agree as a basis for working
together" (169). The broad framework supplied by confessional
pluralism, in short, provides us a way to reconcile the demands of
social unity with the irreducible reality of religious diversity.

T

aken together, the penetrating analyses offered by these two
thoughtful volumes goes a long way toward explaining how
we got where we are today and the nature of the crisis that confronts American society. To say this, however, is not to suggest
that their analyses are always completely satisfying. As penetrating as Smith's deconstruction of contemporary liberal egalitarianism is, for example, one wishes that he had addressed further the
nature of both this ideology and its conflict with "strong religion"
95



Modern Age - Winter 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Winter 2016

Contents
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