Modernity, Religion, and the Public Sphere

By Stephen M. Feldman | 45 Tul. L. Rev. 845 (2011)

Steven H. Shiffrin, in The Religious Left and Church-State Relations, and Winni-fred Fallers Sullivan, in Prison Religion: Faith-Based Reform and the Constitution, both challenge this liberal-conservative dichotomy. They suggest that we have reached this liberal-conservative impasse partly because of the forces animating modernity. Late-stage modernists generally have insisted that the only path to knowledge lay in experience: the empirical study of external reality. This commitment to empiricism ineluctably engendered, at least among intellectuals, an acceptance of ethical relativism: if knowledge must be grounded on experience, then ethical values seemingly could not be verified. (full article)

Back to issue