Lawrence G. Sager

The authors, assuming from the outset that religion is a (or the) primary cause of social violence and injustice, propose a golden mean between oppression of religion and the privleging of views because they are religious. They term their idea "Equal Liberty": "no members of our political community ought to be devalued on account of the spiritual foundations of their important commitments and projects" and "all member… ought to enjoy rights of free speech, personal autonomy, associative freedom, and private property". They claim to oppose both special privileges and special disabilities for religion(s). They oppose the popular idea of "separation of church and state", rejecting the idea that religion might constitute its own category for consideration in the political sphere. They effectively reduce "religion" to a kind of personal viewpoint, belonging to and in the private sphere, with no place, per se, in the public square.… (meer)