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In the preceding chapters, my aim has been to promote a generalized reorientation of thinking about religious faith and a related, and even more thoroughly generalized, justification for classic liberal-democratic political norms. While I have developed it in relation to certain tradition-specific philosophical and theological touchstones, I believe that any epistemically self-aware individual could adopt the overarching perspective I have formulated consistently with whatever worldview she might hold, so long as coerciveness toward others is not essential to that worldview. Moreover, I have given reasons why many worldviews that are often understood as essentially manifesting or underwriting coerciveness need not be understood in that way. I have argued, therefore, that a fully authentic and steadfast acceptance of classic liberal-democratic political norms does not inherently conflict with an equally authentic and steadfast commitment to a particular religious (or, for that matter, nonreligious) worldview. And this is true, I believe, even where the worldview in question involves moral or social prescriptions and proscriptions that will never be legally mandated by any genuine liberal-democratic society of the sort implied by my account of fallibilism and anxiety.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137039125_5

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