IN “Religion and Diplomacy”, the first of the lectures named in his honour in the parish where he served his title, Robert Runcie remarked that, as an officer appointed to the post-war Italy-Yugoslavia Border Commission, he thought it odd, even at the time, that it was not thought necessary to have anyone on the Commission who understood about religion.

Given all that had happened in the former Yugoslavia by the time of the lecture, Runcie’s point needed no justification, and nobody can seriously maintain the irrelevance of religion to almost all the areas of conflict. So, national and international politics have moved beyond a simple assumption of secularism; it is no longer just the claims of religion which are contested, but those of “secularism”, too.

That is not to say that there is any sign of agreement about how to negotiate the perils of a world in which religion is a prominent actor; Jonathan Chaplin shows himself a widely read and deeply reflective guide for those seeking guidance on how to be faithful democrats — and democrats who are people of faith. His book is concerned with the issues as they affect Britain; and what emerges is a case study in the issues presented by the current dynamic of religion and secular political thought.

Demanding as the book is, it is also rich in illustrative examples of events that readers will remember, and, it is to be hoped, they will find reasons to revisit their previous judgements. The range of references and notes shows just how thorough has been the author’s research. Inviting his readers to “define the questions before we shout out the answers” is a real challenge where his subject is concerned. Although Chaplin does not hesitate to express controversial judgements about political questions, they are offered to support his analysis of the substantial issues he is treating.

After the introduction (itself an important part of the text), the first two chapters of the book, Part One, aim to enable the reader to reconfigure “democracy”, to define it and to defend it.

Democracy is the means by which the “political community” pursues the aim of “public justice”; and, because that has to involve “the people”, democracy is the means of their involvement in that project. To that end, democracy needs to be “constitutional”, to allow for the diffusion of power in ways that allow for diversity of views and concerns to be strongly articulated, for the people to give or withhold consent, and to participate in the project of public justice.

Part 2 consists of two chapters devoted to providing much-needed clarity about the nature of “secularism”, its limitations, and the part that it plays in a democracy: not to rule faith out of bounds in political life, but to treat all faiths and non-religious philosophies as having equal title to expression and non-privileged weight, as faiths, in political outcomes. The author makes some complex distinctions in the examination of secularism very accessible.

The defence of a constitutional democracy and of the way in which a secular context can, none the less, make space for diverse and passionate expressions of faith prepares the way for Chaplin’s proposal for a democracy in which the public expressions of faiths of many sorts can play their part without being either privileged over against secular philosophies and each other or “pliant”: too conformed to a prevailing secularism. In four strongly argued chapters Chaplin commends the place of the expression of faith — “faithful speech” — in public debate and decision-making, the honouring of the “faithful conscience”, the rights of faith-based associations and institutions. and the place and limitations of faith in the exercise of power.

All of these chapters are saved from mere abstractions by the range of examples from recent, and contested, legal and political decisions. Chaplin is inviting readers to accept the discomfort and the creativity of the society that his subtitle commends: a “politics of deep diversity”, one in which faith plays a powerful, vibrant, and, at the same time, non-dominating part. He is offering an antidote both to religious privilege and to such a level of embarrassment about religious privilege that faith is silenced — and, to that extent, faith in democracy weakened.

His wide range of examples might usefully have included a critique of that most widely dominant of secular disciplines, economics: what part might faith play in economic debate and decisions, neither privileged nor pliant?

And, given Chaplin’s citing of so much case law, it is perhaps surprising that he does not offer a critique of Jonathan Sumption’s less than completely enthusiastic view of the part played by constitutions and courts: how would Chaplin’s proposed constitutional order achieve a rightful faith in judges, not privileged and not dominant? Given the current debates about limiting access to judicial review, that is a very topical and neuralgic issue.

Wide-ranging, radical, topical, and accessible, this is a book to make you clearer in your thinking, and more likely to revise it.

The Rt Revd Dr Peter Selby is a former Bishop of Worcester.

Faith in Democracy: Framing a politics of deep diversity
Jonathan Chaplin
SCM Press £19.99
(978-0-334-06023-9)
Church Times Bookshop £16