The Republic We Share: Religion, Law, and the Search for Common Ground in a Pluralistic Society

How can people who disagree about religion, morality, and the meaning of the good life nevertheless share a political community as equals?

The Republic We Share examines one of the enduring challenges of American democracy: how a pluralistic society can protect freedom of conscience while maintaining a common constitutional order. Drawing on constitutional law, political philosophy, history, and religious thought, Armin J. Jezari explores the boundaries between religious liberty and governmental authority, the meaning of church-state separation, and the difficult conflicts that arise when deeply held convictions encounter competing rights and public obligations.

Moving from the foundations of American religious liberty to contemporary disputes involving conscience, equality, education, and political participation, the book rejects two opposing assumptions: that religion must disappear from public life in order for government to remain neutral, and that religious conviction should confer authority over the consciences of others.

In their place, Jezari develops an account of constitutional pluralism grounded in institutional neutrality, freedom of conscience, equal citizenship, noncoercion, institutional pluralism, and reciprocal civic restraint. The goal is not agreement on ultimate questions, but something both more modest and more essential: a civic order capable of sustaining principled disagreement without turning disagreement into domination or exclusion.

Accessible to general readers while engaging seriously with constitutional doctrine and political thought, The Republic We Share offers a framework for moving beyond the culture-war choice between religious establishment and enforced secularism-and toward a republic in which citizens with profoundly different convictions can still recognize one another as equal participants in a shared constitutional project.