Introduction

In modern pluralist societies, the public sphere has been secularized and religion is relegated to private life. On the one hand, there is a differentiation of private and public spheres as well as the marginalization of religion, and on the other hand, the religious side shows an unwillingness to be treated as a merely private matter, and there is an increasing demand from religious believers for public inuence and for recognition of the public signicance of religious values. This calls for a reconsideration of the question of what role religion should play in the public sphere in modern pluralist democracies. By “public sphere” I mean civil society and the domain of politics.