There is a profound need today to  re-investigate religion's relationship to a public political sphere of authority. Whether it's the media row over Rowan Williams' suggestion that Sharia law might play a part in the British legal system, or when a woman working at a public marriage registrars office is allowed to abstain from granting marriage licenses to gay couples, we are constantly made aware of the need to continue to think through the role of religion in the public sphere today.  In this sense, institutions like the church must continue to reflect upon their relation to institutions like the state.  What's interesting about this suggestion is that it often uncovers the manner in which both sets of institutions are inherently political and both institutions cohere according to a set of cultural values and beliefs. The social theories best suited to investigate political authority structures, therefore, often go beyond the standard political science emphasis on institutions themselves in order to uncover the cultural conditions and dispositions which animate them and justify their existence.

Could it be that the public political sphere depends upon values which it cannot provide in and of itself?  Can religious communities like Christian churches foster social solidarity in a western culture that is increasingly "bowling alone?" These questions are raised most acutely in the work of Juergen Habermas. In the coming months I have an essay on Barth and Habermas coming out in Political Theology, and recently gave a presentation on Habermas to some colleagues here at the Centre for Religion and Political Culture at The University of Manchester. I wanted to take a moment to explain a little about this essay and respond to a common question regarding Habermas's response to religious violence.

Habermas's basic premise is that western democracy depends on the rational autonomous thought of private individuals. People who vote can't be coerced by TV adds of the state authority (vote yes for he Panama Canal, or vote yes for the Euro), or have their basic inclination to think for themselves eroded by the mass media if they are going to legitimate the state authority with their votes. In short, Habermas calls for rational communication to occur between different groups of people who can argue their ideas out and think considerately about what kind of government they want. Habermas wouldn't want to fix western democracy with American Idol mass voting. You need more than political will. Said another way, Habermas would promote caucuses over primaries because in a caucus, ideally, people argue things out a bit.

Now, one of the questions which often arises in relation to Habermas's thought concerns the adequacy of his response to religious violence. What do you do when one of the groups of people in your democracy drop a bomb on a conversation? Religious violence does not foster rational debate, and therefore, Habermas's theory falls apart.

On the one hand, yes, Habermas's focus upon rational communication is inadequate on the problem of religious violence. But it seems to me that Habermas's understanding of rational communication naturally opens up to a broader interest in the nature of transcendent universals and the claim they can make on a given political community. It seems to me that then the case of violence we see a shift taking place at the ponit at which the bomb is dropped. That shift moves from communication to a challenge to the universal rules of rational conversation in the first place. Violence starts a competition between transcendent universals which make any communication possible. The bomb focuses our attention upon our most deeply held beliefs about justice, freedom and immortality. It is here that Habermas's theories of rational communication find their basis, and it is here that the response to the terrorist's religious beliefs can find a coincidence with the state's transcendent universals as well. It is here in this space that I think Habermas remains relevant, even if inadequate.

One of the questions I am asking Habermas is critical and concerns the manner in which the state can justify its policing? At what point does its policing of religious communities become counter productive to its aim at fostering a critically debating public sphere which legitimizes its authority? In many ways, I would be thankful that the state might resist violence, but in what sense can a religious tradition challenge the violence of the state in say contemporary Zimbabwe or World War II era Europe? I would argue that the only way Habermas can maintain the legitimacy of the state's rule is if he worked out the possibility in which an eschatological dawn hangs out in front of both the state and the religion, no matter who is dropping bombs.There is, in other words, a hope in a peaceable kingdom which, as Derrida suggests, must be dis-associated from the state. In Derrida's terms, a kind of messianism without a messiah is needed which relativizes all earthly rulers be they religious or secular.

The key problem which remains for me regarding the relation between state and religion regards the nature of transcendence. Given the sophistication with which Habermas thinks political transcendence through as a kind of "Transcendence for this World," I believe his thought justifies an engagement and response by theologians. Although we should be thankful for his contribution in this regard, as it happens, religious traditions themselves have much to contribute as well. In particular I find that Karl Barth's political theology can be quite helpful in considering how the Christian notion of the kingdom of God relates to the kingdoms of this earth. What is hope? How is it related to progress and emancipation? What is political idolatry? How is it related to nationalism, totalitarianism and fascism? It is true that Marx can help us think through these questions, but so can Barth.

In other words, the resurgence of religion in the public sphere today demands that we be willing to investigate the logic and possibility of a theological understanding of political culture. And an engagement with Habermas's thought bears this out.