Why Religion in Politics Does Not Violate la Conception Américaine de la Laïcité

La conception Américaine de la laïcité consists principally of a constitutional norm-the nonestablishment norm-and of the law that the U.S. Supreme Court has developed in the course of enforcing the norm. The nonestablishment norm forbids government-both the national government and state government-to “establish” religion. American laïcité also consists of what we may call “the morality of liberal democracy.” My aim in this essay is to explain why religion in politics does not violate American laïcité; more specifically, my aim is to explain why political reliance on religiously grounded morality violates neither the nonestablishment norm nor the morality of liberal democracy.