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Do Religious Justifications Distort Policy Debates? Some Empirics on the Case for Public Reason

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2020

Steven Kettell Open the ORCID record for Steven Kettell [Opens in a new window]  and
Paul A. Djupe
Steven Kettell*
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
Paul A. Djupe
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Steven Kettell, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK. E-mail: s.kettell@warwick.ac.uk
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Abstract

Scholars engaged in debates about the use of public reason often view religious arguments as being out of bounds. Yet the real-world impact of religious discourse remains under-explored. This study contributes to research in this area with an empirical test looking at the impact of religious arguments on a particular policy debate. A survey experiment explored the effects of religious and secular cues with varied policy directions on the issue of assisted dying. The findings showed that secular arguments were considerably more likely to elicit a positive response, and that, while religious arguments were not a conversation stopper, they produced significant distortions in political perceptions among participants, though not necessarily along the identity lines critical to the public reason debate.

Type
Article
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , September 2020 , pp. 517 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2020

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Footnotes

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paper. We would also like to thank Angelia Wilson, who brought us together at a conference at the University of Manchester.

References

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