Religion and Politics in Democracy

in Defense of a Critical Role

Abstract

This article intends to rise some problems and suggest a thesis about the relation between religion and politics in the context of a modern democratic regime. In order to achieve this aim, it is proposed a comprehension of religion, which starts from contributions both of those who defend, and those who criticize this human activity. Next, it is presented a conception of politics whose center is the concept of political power, exerted in a privileged way by the state in the modern context. So, the first premise of the argument is that we are dealing with different human activities, but that can and in fact interact. In the following step, Roger Trigg’s approach to the problem of privatization of religion in modern democracies is discussed, and the notion of laicity, based on Martin Rhonheimer’s ideas is shown. By means of that, the paper introduces three other premises of the argument: religion is part of the public sphere, it is antidemocratic to exclude religious groups from the political debate, but the laicity of the state is incompatible with a theocracy. In conclusion, founded on the notion of critical attitude, it is presented a response do the problem of how to combine the requirement of including all social groups in the democratic public sphere with the features of religion (especially Christianity) and democracy, as they were initially indicated.