ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author claims that religion is the most comprehensive system of what he calls "big meaning" available to us. He claims that autonomy liberalism suffers from a deficit in terms of its ability to provide individuals with big meaning. The author also claims that the liberalism of flourishing has clear advantages over autonomy liberalism in terms of its ability to provide the citizens of the liberal state with meaning. For this reason, the liberalism of flourishing is better equipped than autonomy liberalism to compete with religion in states in which liberalism is being challenged by religion. This chapter shows that the relation between the liberalism of flourishing and religion is more complex than that. Autonomy liberalism is the political expression of the human urge for normality. The author claims that in order to gain an adequate understanding of the interrelationship between religion and liberalism, one has to introduce an additional element into the discussion: nationalism.
