Contrary to what is suggested in the first epigraph by Wolin, there is certainly no civil-religion project in John Rawls. There is, however, a project to domesticate religion, and this project is central to the defining purposes of Rawls's liberalism. Arguably, just as it may be true that John Locke's real greatness as a philosopher of liberalism rests not with his views concerning property or individual rights but rather with his theoretical response to religion, so the same may be no less true of John Rawls. The whole intellectual trajectory sketched in Part II of this book finds its consummation in the Introduction to Rawls's Political Liberalism. Liberalism is really defined by religion, and by the challenges that illiberal religions pose to a secular civic order (an association of citizens ordered for the sake of citizenship). There is a wide consensus today that Rawls's political philosophy represents the crowning expression of the liberal tradition, at least up until the end of the twentieth century. (Who knows what further articulations of liberalism lie in the future?) It therefore seems fitting to conclude Part II’s survey of liberalism with some reflections on Rawls's views about citizenship and religion. My response to Wolin is that Rawls might actually have come up with a more viable account of his philosophy of liberalism if he had allowed himself to articulate more of a “civic cult” in his liberalism than he does. My thesis in this chapter, to put it very briefly, is that Rawls is so averse to religious theocracies that he goes excessively out of his way to avoid legislating (what he sees as) a kind of “liberal theocracy” – and thereby weakens his liberalism.

Political Liberalism has generated an astonishing set of debates within contemporary liberalism. This is perfectly understandable, for the post-Rawlsian debates raise issues of profound significance for contemporary society (i.e., the current situation of radical ethnic, cultural, and religious pluralism). I do not doubt that the questions raised by Rawls about liberal citizenship and how it ought to accommodate illiberal forms of religion are entirely worthy of the attention they have received from political philosophers. However, I do think there is one striking text in Political Liberalism that has received less attention in the Rawls literature than it merits – namely Rawls's effort to define liberalism, notably in his Introduction, in relation to the Wars of Religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Of course, it is hardly a novel idea to trace liberalism back to this historical context; on the contrary, it is virtually a cliché to say that liberalism arose out of the Wars of Religion (which of course does not mean that this isn't true). Thus it is interesting that Rawls chooses to introduce his crowning articulation of his own version of liberalism with a story of this kind. It is especially interesting exactly how Rawls crafts this story – so to speak, how he chooses to flesh out (however compactly or telegraphically) this old cliché or truism. It may even pay dividends for our understanding of the other debates that Political Liberalism has aroused.