JOBNAME: No Job Name PAGE: 1 SESS: 21 OUTPUT: Thu Jun 6 17:12:36 2013 SUM: 99C3AA40 /v2451/blackwell/journals/japp_v0_i0/japp_12023 Does Religion Deserve Our Respect? COLIN BIRD ABSTRACT This article enumerates several different possible construals of the idea that religion is owed respect. It asks: 1. how religion might be an object of respect; 2. what sorts of respect religion might command; and 3. whose respect might be at stake in complaints about and demands for religious recognition. By distinguishing various ways in which these questions can be interpreted, the discussion aims to introduce some clarity to a notoriously controversial and knotty area of public discussion. Although the article does not propose any particular answer to the question ‘Does religion deserve our respect?’, it does urge that theorists give greater attention to the neglected way in which religions have a ‘public presence’ that engenders distinctive sorts of social respect. I suggest that the popularity among academic political theorists and philosophers of a ‘liberal’ paradigm emphasising the importance of freedom of conscience and ‘respect for persons’ has led them to ignore the implications of ‘public presence’ for debates over the place of religion in modern secular societies. The sceptical and dismissive attitude expressed in our question tends to move in and out of fashion. Those who assume it often style themselves as an intellectual avant-garde for whom religious institutions are primitive throwbacks. Their attacks on religious belief usually provoke vigorous counter-reactions in defence of religious claims. For a while, religion becomes fashionable and intellectually permissible again before a new genera- tion of critics once again rises in protest.This ebb and flow has been with us since at least the sophists of Ancient Greece, but it has become particularly marked, almost routi- nized, in the West since the Enlightenment. Today, after a long swing of the pendulum back toward religious accommodation since the 1960s, atheism, and hostility to religion more generally, is trendy again.The past four decades have witnessed striking religious revival and ferment. Religious leaders and movements have become more politically assertive than before (as examples one might cite the troublesome rise of Islamic fundamentalism and associated political extremism, the ascendance of the Christian Right in American politics, or Pope John Paul II’s role in the demise of the Soviet bloc). Partly as a result of these developments, the place of religion in public life has become, and remains, a topic of intense debate. During the same period, religious music enjoyed an unexpected renaissance 1 and intellectuals redis- covered religion, both as a field of fruitful inquiry in its own right, and as a social and political force that historians and social analysts neglect at their peril. However, in the wake of these developments, especially that of Islamic extremism, religious constituen- cies now face a crescendo of ‘new atheist’ criticism. 2 Arguments on both sides of this seesaw are today couched in terms of respect, because contemporary ideals of ‘multiculturalism’ trumpet that concept as central to the proper Toppan Best-set Premedia Limited Journal Code: JAPP Proofreader: Mony Article No: JAPP12023 Delivery date: 06 Jun 2013 Page Extent: 15 Journal of Applied Philosophy doi: 10.1111/japp.12023 © 2013 The Author. Journal of Applied Philosophy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society for Applied Philosophy. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42