ABSTRACT
This chapter applies convergence liberalism to deliberation and religious accommodation. It aims to develop a convergence-based principle of exclusion and apply it to dialogue, individual political action and religious accommodation. The chapter demonstrates that reconciliation between public reason liberals and their religious critics has been borne out in both theory and practice. Political liberals have always protected the individual's right to be driven by reasons that are sound, moral and inappropriate for public discourse. Mainstream public reason liberals implicitly view politics as a forum, publicly justified outputs. The US Congress provides many such cases, most egregiously in foreign policy, where Congress has allowed the president to initiate military conflicts without congressional approval, despite the fact that the Constitution requires a congressional vote to declare war. The chapter focuses on the principles of exclusion embedded in American constitutional law to assess several classic court decisions on the appropriate extent of religious accommodation.
