I have argued that what I have called “the standard approach” to questions about religion and liberal democratic decision-making does not ground the obligations of citizenship that its proponents put forward. This approach fails because it does not take adequate account of the fact that citizenship is an achievement, nor does it take adequate account of the ways that achievement is won. Once we attend to the role of civil society in bringing about the realization of citizenship and to the important contributions it makes to civic argument and public political debate, it becomes clear that citizens have deep but reasonable disagreements about which specification of liberal democratic citizenship is the right one. The upshot is that liberal democracies with vital and politically active secondary associations are likely to be characterized by deep but reasonable disagreement about what reasons and arguments citizens owe one another when they debate and vote on important political questions. I argued in chapter 5 that citizens may rely on religious arguments and vote their religious convictions even if they are not prepared to make good their arguments or justify their votes by appeal to reasons of other kinds.

The obligations of citizenship that I have defended do not allow citizens to vote and argue on any conscientiously chosen basis whatever. To honor their obligations, citizens must have and be ready to apply standards to their own reasons for voting and to their own political arguments.