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Sanctuary and the Limits of Public Reason: A Deweyan Corrective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2018

Alicia Steinmetz
Alicia Steinmetz*
Affiliation:
Yale University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Alicia Steinmetz, Department of Political Science, Yale University, P. O. Box 208301, New Haven, CT 06520. E-mail: alicia.steinmetz@yale.edu.
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Abstract

This article contributes to the debate over the appropriate place of religion in public reason by showing the limits of this framework for understanding and evaluating the real-world religious political activism of social movements. Using the 1980s Sanctuary Movement as a central case study, I show how public reason fails to appreciate the complex religious dynamics of this movement, the reasons actors employ religious reasoning, and, as a result, the very meaning of these acts. In response, I argue that a Deweyan perspective on the tasks and challenges of the democratic public offers a richer, more contextualized approach to evaluating the status of religion in the public sphere as well as other emerging publics whose modes of engagement defy prevailing notions of reasonableness and civility.

Type
Article
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , September 2018 , pp. 498 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2018 

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Footnotes

Alicia Steinmetz is a PhD candidate in political science at Yale University and a Fox International Fellow at the University of Cambridge. I am deeply grateful to Andrew March, Ian Shapiro, Hélène Landemore, Ana De La O, Thania Sanchez, Andrea Cassatella, Matthew Shafer, Devin Goure, Amy Gais, Clara Picker, the Yale Political Theory Women's Writing Group, as well as several anonymous reviewers and Nicholas Tampio for their feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Previous versions were presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the New England Political Science Association, the PSGSA IN/VISIBILITY Conference at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, where audiences provided thoughtful questions and suggestions. Finally, I thank Jorge Renderos, without whom I would have had neither inspiration, nor the opportunity, to study and learn from the Sanctuary Movement in the first place.

References

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